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THE DECENNIAL PUBLICATIONS OF 
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 



THE DECENNIAL PUBLICATIONS 



ISSUED IN COMMEMORATION OP THE COMPLETION OP THE FIRST TEN 
YEARS OP THE UNIVERSITY'S EXISTENCE 



AUTHORIZED BY THE BOARD OP TRUSTEES ON THE RECOMMENDATION 
OF THE PRESIDENT AND SENATE 



EDITED BY A COMMITTEE APPOINTED BY THE SENATE 

EDWAED CAPPS 
STABB WILLAED CUTTING EOLLIN D. SALISBUEY 

JAMES EOWIiAND ANGELL WILLIAM I. THOMAS SHAILEB MATHEWS 

CARL DARLING BUCK FREDERIC IVES CARPENTEE OSEAB BOLZA 

JULIUS STIEGLITZ JACQUES LOEB 



THESE VOLUMES ARE DEDICATED 

TO THE MEN AND WOMEN 

OP OUR TIME AND COUNTRY WHO BY WISE AND GENEROUS GIVING 

HAVE ENCOURAGED THE SEARCH AFTER TRUTH 

IN ALL DEPARTMENTS OF KNOWLEDGE 



STUDIES IN LOGICAL THEORY 



STUDIES IN LOGICAL THEORY 



BY 

JOHN DEWEY 

PEOFESSOB OF PHILOSOPHY 

WITH THE CO-OPERATION OF MEMBERS AND FELLOWS OF THE 
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY 



THE DECENNIAL PUBLICATIONS 
SECOND SERIES VOLUME XI 



CHICAGO 

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 

1903 







Copyright, 1903 

BY THE UNIVEBSITY OF CHICAGO 



Gift 
Hie University 



PKEFACE 

This volume presents some results of the work done in the 
matter of logical theory in the Department of Philosophy of 
the University of Chicago in the first decade of its existence. 
The eleven Studies are the work of eight different hands, 
all, with the exception of the editor, having at some period 
held Fellowships in this University, Dr. Heidel in Greek, 
the others in Philosophy. Their names and present pur- 
suits are indicated in the Table of Contents. The editor 
has occasionally, though rarely, added a footnote or phrase 
which might serve to connect one Study more closely with 
another. The pages in the discussion of Hypothesis, on 
Mill and Whewell, are by him. With these exceptions, 
each writer is individually and completely responsible for 
his own Study. 

The various Studies present, the editor believes, about 
the relative amount of agreement and disagreement that is 
natural in view of the conditions of their origin. The 
various writers have been in contact with one another in 
Seminars and lecture courses in pursuit of the same topics, 
and have had to do with shaping one another's views. 
There are several others, not represented in this volume, 
who have also participated in the evolution of the point of 
view herein set forth, and to whom the writers acknowledge 
their indebtedness. The disagreements proceed from the 
diversity of interests with which the different writers ap- 
proach the logical topic ; and from the fact that the point 
of view in question is still (happily) developing and showing 
no signs of becoming a closed system. 

If the Studies themselves do not give a fair notion of the 

ix 



j 



x Preface 

nature and degree of the harmony in the different writers' 
methods, a preface is not likely to succeed in so doing. A few 
words may be in place, however, about a matter repeatedly 
touched upon, but nowhere consecutively elaborated — the 
more ultimate philosophical bearing of what is set forth. _ All 
agree, the editor takes the liberty of saying, that judgment is 
the central function of knowing, and hence affords the central 
problem of logic ; that since the act of knowing is intimately 
and indissolubly connected with the like yet diverse functions 
of affection, appreciation, and practice, it only distorts results 
reached to treat knowing as a self -inclosed and self-explana- 
tory whole — hence the intimate connections of logical theory 
with functional psychology; that since knowledge appears 
as a function within experience, and yet passes judgment 
upon both the processes and contents of other functions, its 
work and aim must be distinctively reconstructive or trans- 
f ormatory ; that since Reality must be defined in terms of 
experience, judgment appears accordingly as the medium 
through which the consciously effected evolution of Reality 
goes on; that there is no reasonable standard of truth (or of 
success of the knowing function) in general, except upon the 
postulate that Reality is thus dynamic or self -evolving, and, 
in particular, except through reference to the specific offices 
which knowing is called upon to perform in readjusting and 
expanding the means and ends of life. And all agree that 
this conception gives the only promising basis upon which 
the working methods of science, and the proper demands of 
the moral life, may co-operate. All this, doubtless, does not 
take us very far on the road to detailed conclusions, but it 
is better, perhaps, to get started in the right direction than 
to be so definite as to erect a dead- wall in the way of farther 
movement of thought. 

In general, the obligations in logical matters of the writers 



Preface xi 

are roughly commensurate with the direction of their criti- 
cisms. Upon the whole, most is due to those whose views 
are most sharply opposed. To Mill, Lotze, Bosanquet, and 
Bradley the writers then owe special indebtedness. The 
editor acknowledges personal indebtedness to his present 
colleagues, particularly to Mr. George H. Mead, in the 
Faculty of Philosophy, and to a former colleague, Dr. Alfred 
H. Lloyd, of the University of Michigan. For both inspira- 
tion and the forging of the tools with which the writers 
have worked there is a pre-eminent obligation on the part 
of all of us to William James, of Harvard University, who, 
we hope, will accept this acknowledgment and this book as 
unworthy tokens of a regard and an admiration that are 
coequal. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

I. Thought and its Subject-Matter - • - 1 

By John Dewey 

II. Thought and its Subject-Matter : The Antecedents of 

Thought 23 

By John Dewey 

III. Thought and its Subject-Matter : The Datum of 
Thinking 49 

By John Dewey 

IV. Thought and its Subject-Matter: The Content and 
Object of Thought - 65 

By John Dewey 

V. Bosanquet's Theory of Judgment 86 

By Helen Bradford Thompson, Ph.D., Director of the 
Psychological Laboratory of Mount Holyoke College 

VI. Typical Stages in the Development of Judgment - 127 
By Simon Fraser McLennan, Ph.D., Professor of Phi- 
losophy in Oberlin College 

VII. The Nature of Hypothesis 142 

By Myron Lucius Ashley, Ph.D., Instructor, American 
Correspondence School 

VIII. Image and Idea in Logic ------ 183 

By Willard Clark Gore, Ph.D., Assistant Professor 
of Psychology in the University of Chicago 

IX. The Logic of the Pre-Socratic Philosophy - - 203 

By William Arthur Heidel, Ph.D., Professor of 
Latin in Iowa College 

X. Valuation as a Logical Process - 227 

By Henry Waldgrave Stuart, Ph.D., Instructor in 
Philosophy in the State University of Iowa 

XI. Some Logical Aspects of Purpose ... - 341 

By Addison Webster Moore, Ph.D., Assistant Pro- 
fessor of Philosophy in the University of Chicago 

xiii 



i 



THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER: THE GENERAL 
PROBLEM OF LOGICAL THEORY 

No one doubts that thought, at least reflective, as distinct 
from what is sometimes called constitutive, thought, is deriva- 
tive and secondary. It comes after something and out of 
something, and for the sake of something. No one doubts 
that the thinking of everyday practical life and of science is 
of this reflective type. We think about ; we reflect over. If 
we ask what it is which is primary and radical to thought; 
if we ask what is the final objective for the sake of which 
thought intervenes ; if we ask in what sense we are to under- 
stand thought as a derived procedure, we are plunging our- 
selves into the very heart of the logical problem : the relation 
of thought to its empirical antecedents and to its consequent, 
truth, and the relation of truth to reality. 

Yet from the naive point of view no difficulty attaches to 
these questions. The antecedents of thought are our uni- 
verse of life and love; of appreciation and struggle. We 
think about anything and everything: snow on the ground; 
the alternating clanks and thuds that rise from below; the 
relation of the Monroe Doctrine to the embroglio in Vene- 
zuela ; the relation of art to industry ; the poetic quality of 
a painting by Botticelli ; the battle of Marathon ; the economic 
interpretation of history; the proper definition of cause; the 
best method of reducing expenses; whether and how to 
renew the ties of a broken friendship; the interpretation of 
an equation in hydrodynamics; etc. 

Through the madness of this miscellaneous citation there 
appears so much of method: anything — event, act, value, 

1 



Studies in Logical Theoey 



ideal, person, or place — may be an object of thought. Reflec- 
tion busies itself alike with physical nature, the record of 
social achievement, and the endeavors of social aspiration. 
<£; "7" It is with reference to such affairs that thought is derivative ; 

*?: it is with reference to them that it intervenes or mediates. 
jTaking some part of the universe of action, of affection, of 
social construction, under its special charge, and having 
busied itself therewith sufficiently to meet the special diffi- 
culty presented, thought releases that topic and enters upon 
further more direct experience. 

Sticking for a moment to this naive standpoint, we recog- 
nize a certain rhythm of direct practice and derived theory ; 
of primary construction and of secondary criticism ; of living 
appreciation and of abstract description ; of active endeavor 
and of pale reflection. We find that every more direct 
primary attitude passes upon occasion into its secondary 
deliberative and discursive counterpart. ' We find that when 
the latter has done its work it passes away and passes on. 
fcom the naive standpoint such rhythm is taken as a matter 
of course! There is no attempt to state either the nature of 
the occasion which demands the thinking attitude, nor to 
formulate a theory of the standard by which is judged its 
success. u^To general theory is propounded as to the exact 
relationship between thinking and what antecedes and suc- 
ceeds it. Much less do we ask how empirical circumstances 
can generate rationality of thought; nor how it is possible 
I for reflection to lay claim to power of determining truth and 
\ thereby of constructing further reality. 

If we were to ask the iihinking of naive life to present, 
with a minimum of theoretical elaboration, its conception of 
its own practice, we should get an answer running not unlike 
this : Thinking is a kind of activity which we perform at 
specific need] just as at other need we engage in other sorts of 
activity : as converse with a friend ; draw a plan for a house ; 



General Problem of Logical Theory 3 

take a^walk; eat a dinner; purchase a suit of clothes; etc., 
etc. -In general, its material is anything in the wide universe 
which seems to be relevant to this need — anything which 
may serve as a resource in denning the difficulty or in sug- 
gesting modes of dealing effectively with it. The measure 
of its success, the standard of its validity, is precisely the 
degree in which the thinking actually disposes of the diffi- 
culty and allows us to proceed with more direct modes of 
experiencing, that are forthwith possessed of more assured 
and deepened value. 

If we inquire why the naive attitude does not go on to 
elaborate these implications of its own practice into a sys- 
tematic theory, the answer, on its own basis, is obvious. 
Thought arises in response to its own occasion. And this 
occasion is so exacting that there is time, as there is need, 
only to do the thinking which is needed in that occasion — 
not to reflect upon the thinking itself. .Reflection follows so 
naturally upon its appropriate cue, its issue is so obvious, so 
practical, the entire relationship is so organic, that once 
grant the position that thought arises in reaction to specific 
demand, and there is not the particular type of thinking 
called logical theory because there is not the practical demand 
for reflection of that sort.^^Our attention is taken up with 
particular questions and specific answers. What we have to 
reckon with is not the problem of, How can I think ilber- 
haupt? but, JEEow shall I think right here and now? -Not 
what is the test of thought at large, but what validates and 
confirms this thought? 

In conformity with this view, it follows that a generic 
account of our thinking behavior, the generic account termed 
logical theory, arises at historic periods in which the situa- 
tion has lost the organic character above described. The 
general theory of reflection, as over against its concrete 
exercise, appears when occasions for reflection are so over- 



Studies in Logical Theory 



whelming and so mutually conflicting that specific adequate 
response in thought is blockecL Again, it shows itself when 
practical affairs are so multifarious, complicated, and remote 
from control that thinking is held off from successful pas- 
sage into them. 

Anyhow (sticking to the naive standpoint), it is true that 
the stimulus to that particular form of reflective thinking 
termed logical theory is found when circumstances require 
the act of thinking and nevertheless impede clear and coher- 
ent thinking in detail; or when they occasion thought and 
then prevent the results of thinking from exercising directive 
influence upon the immediate concerns of life. Under these 
conditions we get such questions as the following: What is 
the relation of rational thought to crude or unreflective experi- 
ence? What is the relation of thought to reality? What 
is the barrier which prevents reason from complete penetra- 
tion into the world of truth? What is it that makes us live 
alternately in a concrete world of experience in which thought 
as such finds not satisfaction, and in a world of ordered 
thought which is yet only abstract and ideal? 

It is not my intention here to pursue the line of historical 
inquiry thus suggested. Indeed, the point would not be 
mentioned did it not serve to fix attention upon the nature 
of the logical problem. 

It is in dealing with this latter type of questions that 
logical theory has taken a turn which separates it widely 
from the theoretical implications of practical deliberation 
and of scientific research. The two latter, however much they 
differ from each other in detail, agree in a fundamental 
principle. They both assume that every reflective problem 
and operation arises with reference to some specific situation, 
and has to subserve a specific purpose dependent upon its 
own occasion. They assume and observe distinct limits — 
limits from which and to which. There is the limit of origin 



General Problem of Logical Theory 5 

in the needs of the particular situation which evokes reflec- 
tion. There is the limit of terminus in successful dealing 
with the particular problem presented — or in retiring, baffled, 
to take up some other question. The query that at once faces 
us regarding the nature of logical theory is whether reflection 
upon reflection shall recognize these limits, endeavoring to 
formulate them more exactly and to define their relationships 
to each other more adequately ; or shall it abolish limits, do 
away with the matter of specific conditions and specific aims 
of thought, and discuss thought and its relation to empirical 
antecedents and rational consequents (truth) at large ? 

At first blush, it might seem as if the very nature of 
logical theory as generalization of the reflective process must 
of necessity disregard the matter of particular conditions and 
particular results as irrelevant. How, the implication runs, 
could reflection become generalized save by elimination of 
details as irrelevant ? Such a conception in fixing the central 
problem of logic fixes once for all its future career and mate- 
rial. The essential business of logic is henceforth to discuss 
the relation of thought as such to reality as such. It may, 
indeed, involve much psychological material, particularly in 
the discussion of the processes which antecede thinking and 
which call it out. It may involve much discussion of the 
concrete methods of investigation and verification employed 
in the various sciences. It may busily concern itself with 
the differentiation of various types and forms of thought — 
different modes of conceiving, various conformations of judg- 
ment, various types of inferential reasoning. But it concerns 
itself with any and all of these three fields, not on their own 
account or as ultimate, but as subsidiary to the main prob- 
lem : the relation of thought as such, or at large, to reality as 
such, or at large. Some of the detailed considerations referred 
to may throw light upon the terms under which thought 
transacts its business with reality ; upon, say, certain peculiar 



6 Studies in Logical Theory 

limitations it has to submit to as best it may. Other con- 
siderations throw light upon the ways in which thought gets 
at reality. Still other considerations throw light upon the 
forms which thought assumes in attacking and apprehending 
reality. But in the end all this is incidental. In the end the 
one problem holds: How do the specifications of thought as 
such hold good of reality as such? In fine, logic is sup- 
posed to grow out of the epistemological inquiry and to lead 
up to its solution. " 

From this point of view various aspects of logical theory 
are well stated by an author whom later on we shall con- 
sider in some detail. J^otze 1 refers to "universal forms and 
principles of thought which hold good everywhere both in 
judging of reality and in weighing possibility, irrespective 
of any difference in the objects" This defines the business 
of pure logic. This is clearly the question of thought as 
such — of thought at large or in general. Then we have the 
question " of how far the most complete structure of thought 
.... can claim to be an adequate account of that which we 
seem compelled to assume as the object and occasion of our 
ideas." This is clearly the question of the relation of thought 
at large to reality at large. It is epistemology. Then 
comes "applied logic," having to do with the actual employ- 
ment of concrete forms of thought with reference to investi- 
gation of specific topics and subjects. This " applied" logic 
would, if the standpoint of practical deliberation and of scien- 
tific research were adopted, be the sole genuine logic. But 
the existence of thought in itself having been agreed upon, 
we have in this "applied" logic only an incidental inquiry of 
how the particular resistances and oppositions which "pure " 
thought meets from particular matters may best be dis- 
counted. It is concerned with methods of investigation 
which obviate defects in the relationship of thought at 

i Logic (translation, Oxford, 1888), Vol. I, pp. 10, 11. Italics mine. 



General Problem of Logical Theory 7 

large to reality at large, as these present themselves under 
the limitations of human experience. It deals merely with 
hindrances, and with devices for overcoming them; it is 
directed by considerations of utility. When we reflect that 
this field includes the entire procedure of practical delibera- 
tion and of concrete scientific research, we begin to realize 
something of the significance of the theory of logic which 
regards the limitations of specific origination and specific 
outcome as irrelevant to its main problem, which assumes an 
activity of thought "pure" or "in itself," that is, "irrespec- 
tive of any difference in its objects." 

This suggests, by contrast, the opposite mode of stating 
the problem of logical theory. Generalization of the nature 
of the reflective process certainly involves elimination of much 
of the specific material and contents of the thought-situa- 
tions of daily life and of critical science. Quite compatible 
with this, however, is the notion that jit seizes upon certain 
specific conditions and factors, and aims to bring them to 
clear consciousness — not to abolish them. While eliminat- 
ing the particular material of particular practical and scien- 
tific pursuits, (1) it may strive to hit upon the common 
denominator in the various situations which are antecedent 
or primary to thought and which evoke it ; (2) it may attempt 
to show how typical features in the specific antecedents of 
thought call out to diverse typical modes of thought-reaction ; 
(3) it may attempt to state the nature of the specific con- 
sequences in which thought fulfils its career?\ 

(1) It does not eliminate dependence upon specific occa- 
sions as provocative of thought; but endeavors to define 
what in the various situations constitutes them thought- 
provoking. The specific occasion is not eliminated, but in- 
sisted upon and brought into the foreground. Consequently 
psychological considerations are not subsidiary incidents, 
but of essential importance so far as they enable us to trace 



8 Studies in Logical Theory 

the generation of the thought-situation. (2) So from this 
point of view the various types and modes of conceiving, judg- 
ing, and inference are treated, not as qualifications of thought 
per se or at large, but of thought engaged in its specific, 
most economic, effective response to its own particular occa- 
sion; they are adaptations for control of stimuli. The dis- 
tinctions and classifications that have been accumulated in 
"formal" logic are relevant data; but they demand inter- 
pretation from the standpoint of use as organs of adjust- 
ment to material antecedents and stimuli. (3) Finally the 
question of validity, or ultimate objective of thought, is rele- 
vant ; but is such as a matter of the specific issue of the specific 
career of a thought-function. All the typical investigatory 
and »verificatory procedures of the various sciences are inher- 
ently concerned as indicating the ways in which thought 
actually brings itself to its own successful fulfilment in 
dealing with various types of problems. 

While the epistemological type of logic may, as we have 
seen, leave (under the name of applied logic), a subsidiary 
place open for the instrumental type, the type which deals 
with thinking as a specific procedure relative to a specific 
antecedent occasion and to a subsequent specific fulfilment, 
is not able to reciprocate the favor. From its point of view, 
an attempt to discuss the antecedents, data, forms, and objec- 
tive of thought, apart from reference to particular position 
occupied, and particular part played in the growth of experi- 
ence is to reach results which are not so much either true or 
false as they are radically meaningless — because they are 
considered apart from limits. Its results are not only 
abstractions (for all theorizing ends in abstractions), but 
abstractions without possible reference or bearing. ~ From 
this point of view, the taking of something, whether that 
something be thinking activity, its empirical condition, or 
its objective goal, apart from the limits of a historic or devel- 



General Problem of Logical Theory 9 

oping situation, is the essence of metaphysical procedure — 
in the sense of metaphysics which makes a gulf between it 
and science. 

As the reader has doubtless anticipated, it is the object 
of this chapter to present the problem and industry of reflect- 
ive thought from this latter point of view. I recur again 
to the standpoint of naive experience, using the term in a 
sense wide enough to cover both practical procedure and 
concrete scientific research. I resume by saying that this 
point of view knows no fixed distinction between the empiri- 
cal values of unreflective life and the most abstract process 
of rational thought. It knows no fixed gulf between the 
highest flight of theory and control of the details of practical 
construction and behavior. It passes, according to the occa- 
sion and opportunity of the moment, from the attitude of lov- 
ing and struggling and doing to that of thinking and the 
reverse. Its contents or material shift their values back 
and forth from technological or utilitarian to aesthetic, ethic, 
or affectional. It utilizes data of perception or of discursive 
ideation as need calls, just as an inventor now utilizes heat, 
now mechanical strain, now electricity, according to the 
demands set by his aim. From this point of view, more 
definite logical import is attached to our earlier statements 
(p. 2) regarding the possibility of taking anything in the 
universe of experience as subject-matter of thought. Any- 
thing from past experience may be taken which appears to be 
an element in either the statement or the solution of the 
present problem. Thus we understand the coexistence 
without contradiction of an indeterminate possible field and 
a limited actual field. The undefined set of means becomes J 
specific through reference to an end. 

In all this, there is no difference of kind between the 
methods of science and those of the plain man. The difference 
is the greater control in science of the statement of the prob- 



10 Studies in Logical Theory 

lem, and of the selection and use of relevant material, both 
sensible or ideational The two are related to each other 
just as the hit-or-miss, trial-and-error inventions of uncivi- 
lized man stand to the deliberate and consecutively per- 
sistent efforts of a modern inventor to produce a certain 
complicated device for doing a comprehensive piece of work. 
Neither the plain man nor the scientific inquirer is aware, as 
he engages in his reflective activity, of any transition from 
one sphere of existence to another. He knows no two fixed 
worlds — reality on one side and mere subjective ideas on 
the other; he is aware of no gulf to cross. He assumes un- 
interrupted, free, and fluid passage from ordinary experience 
to abstract thinking, from thought to fact, from things to 
theories and back again. Observation passes into develop- 
ment of hypothesis ; deductive methods pass to use in de- 
scription of the particular; inference passes into action with 
no sense of difficulty save those found in the particular task 
in question. The fundamental assumption is continuity in 
and of experience. 

This does not mean that fact is confused with idea, or 
observed datum with voluntary hypothesis, theory with doing, 
any more than a traveler confuses land and water when he 
journeys from one to the other. It simply means that^each 
is placed and used with reference to service rendered the 
other, and with reference to future use of the other. 

Only the epistemological spectator is aware of the fact 
that the everyday man and the scientific man in this free and 
easy intercourse are rashly assuming the right to glide over 
a cleft in the very structure of reality. This fact raises a 
query not favorable to the epistemologist. Why is it that 
the scientific man, who is constantly plying his venturous 
traffic of exchange of facts for ideas, of theories for laws, of 
real things for hypotheses, should be so wholly unaware of 
the radical and generic (as distinct from specific) difficulty 



General Problem of Logical Theory 11 

of the undertakings in which he is engaged ? We thus 
come afresh to our inquiry: Does not the epistemological 
logician unwittingly transfer the specific difficulty which 
always faces the scientific man — the difficulty in detail of 
correct and adequate translation back and forth of this set 
of facts and this group of ideas — into a totally different 
problem of the wholesale relation of thought at large with 
reality in general ? If such be the case, it is clear that the 
very way in which the epistemological type of logic states 
the problem of thinking, in relation both to empirical ante- 
cedents and to objective truth, makes that problem insoluble. 
Working terms, terms which as working are flexible and 
historic, relative, are transformed into absolute, fixed, and 
predetermined forms of being. 

We come a little closer to the problem when we recognize 
that every scientific inquiry passes historically through at 
least four stages, (a) The first of these stages is, if I may 
be allowed the bull, that in which scientific inquiry does not 
take place at all, because no problem or difficulty in the 
quality of the experience has presented itself to provoke 
reflection. We have only to cast our eye back from the 
existing status of any science, or back from the status of any 
particular topic in any science, to discover a time when no 
reflective or critical thinking busied itself with the matter — 
when the facts and relations were taken for granted and 
thus were lost and absorbed in the value which accrued from 
the experience, (b) After the dawning of the problem, 
there comes a period of occupation with relatively crude and 
unorganized facts — the hunting for, locating, and collecting 
of raw material. This is the empiric stage, which no exist- 
ing science, however proud in its attained rationality, can 
disavow as its own progenitor, (c) Then there is also a 
speculative stage : a period of guessing, of making hypothe- 
ses, of framing ideas which later on are labeled and con- 



12 Studies in Logical Theory 

demned as only ideas. There is a period of distinction and 
classification-making which later on is regarded as only 
mentally -gymnastic in character. And no science, however 
proud in its present security of experimental assurance, can 
disavow a scholastic ancestor, (d) Finally, there comes a 
period of fruitful interaction between the mere ideas and 
the mere facts: a period when observation is determined by 
experimental conditions depending upon the use of certain 
guiding conceptions ; when reflection is directed and checked 
at every point by the use of experimental data, and by the 
necessity of finding such form for itself as will enable it to 
serve as premise in a deduction leading to evolution of new 
meanings, and ultimately to experimental inquiry, which 
brings to light new facts. In the emerging of a more orderly 
and significant region of fact, and of a more coherent and 
self-luminous system of meaning, we have the natural limit 
of evolution of the logic of a given science. 

But consider what has happened in this historic record. 
Unanalyzed experience has broken up into distinctions of 
facts and ideas; the factual side has been developed by 
indefinite and almost miscellaneous descriptions and cumu- 
lative listings; the conceptual side has been developed by 
unchecked and speculative elaboration of definitions, classi- 
fications, etc. There has been a relegation of accepted 
meanings to the limbo of mere ideas; there has been a pas- 
sage of some of the accepted facts into the region of mere 
hypothesis and opinion. Conversely, there has been a con- 
tinued issuing of ideas from the region of hypotheses and 
theories into that of facts, of accepted objective and mean- 
ingful contents. Out of a world of only seeming facts, and 
of only doubtful ideas, there emerges a universe continually 
growing in definiteness, order, and luminosity^ 

This progress, verified in every record of science, is an 
absolute monstrosity from the standpoint of the epistemol- 



'1 



General Problem of Logical Theory 13 

ogy which assumes a thought in general, on one side, and a 
reality in general, on the other. The reason that it does not 
present itself as such a monster and miracle to those actually 
concerned with it is because there is a certain homogeneity 
or continuity of reference and of use which controls all 
diversities in both the modes of existence specified and the 
grades of value assigned. ^The distinction of thought and 
fact is treated in the growth of a science, or of any particu- 
lar scientific problem, as an induced and intentional practi- 
cal division of labor; as relative assignments of position 
with reference to performance of a task ; as deliberate distri- 
bution of forces at command for their more economic use. 
The interaction of bald fact and hypothetical idea into the 
outcome of a single world of scientific apprehension and 
comprehension is but the successful achieving of the aim on 
account of which the distinctions in question were insti- 
tuted. 

Thus we come back to the problem of logical theory. To 
take the distinctions of thought and fact, etc., as onto- 
logical, as inherently fixed in the make-up of the structure 
of being, is to treat the actual development of scientific 
inquiry and scientific control as a mere subsidiary topic 
ultimately of only utilitarian worth. _I.t is also to state the 
terms upon which thought and being transact business in a 
way so totally alien to the use made of these distinctions in 
concrete experience as to create a problem which can be dis- 
cussed only in terms of itself — not in terms of the conduct 
of life — metaphysics again in the bad sense of that term. 
As against this, the problem of a logic which aligns itself 
with the origin and employ of reflective thought in everyday 
life and in critical science, is to follow the natural history of 
thinking as a life-process having its own generating antece- 
dents and stimuli, its own states and career, and its own 
specific objective or limit. 



£*- 



14 Studies in Logical Theory 

This point of view makes it possible for logical theory 
to come to terms with psychology. 1 When logic is consid- 
ered as having to do with the wholesale activity of thought 
per se, the question of the historic process by which this 
or that particular thought came to be, of how its object 
happens to present itself as sensation, or perception, or con- 
ception, is quite irrelevant. These things are mere tempo- 
ral accidents. The psychologist (not lifting his gaze from 
the realm of the changeable) may find in them matters of 
interest. His whole industry is just with natural history — 
to trace series of psychical events as they mutually excite 
and inhibit one another. But the logician, we are told, has 
a deeper problem and an outlook of more unbounded horizon. 
He deals with the question of the eternal nature of thought 
and its eternal validity in relation to an eternal reality. He 
is concerned, not with genesis, but with value, not with a 
historic cycle, but with absolute distinctions and relations. 

Still the query haunts us : Is this so in truth ? Or has 
the logician of a certain type arbitrarily made it thus by tak- 
ing his terms apart from reference to the specific occasions 
in which they arise and situations in which they function? 
If the latter, then the very denial of historic relationship 
and of the significance of historic method, is indicative 
only of the unreal character of his own abstraction. It 
means in effect that the affairs under consideration have 
been isolated from the conditions in which alone they have 
determinable meaning and assignable worth. Dtt— is aston- 
ishing that, in the face of the advance of the evolutionary 
method in natural science, any logician can persist in the 
assertion of a rigid difference between the problem of origin 
and of nature ; between genesis and analysis ; between his- 
tory and validity. Such assertion simply reiterates as final 

i See Angel.!., "The Eelations of Structural and Functional Psychology to Phi- 
losophy, 1 ' The Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago, Vol. Ill (1903), 
Part II, pp. 61-6, 70-72. 



General Problem of Logical Theory 15 

a distinction which grew up and had meaning in pre-evolu- 
tionary science. It asserts against the most marked advance 
which scientific method has yet made a survival of a crude 
period of logical scientific procedure. We have no choice 
save either to conceive of thinking as a response to a specific 
stimulus, or else to regard it as something " in itself," hav- 
ing just in and of itself certain traits, elements, and laws. If 
we give up the last view, we must take the former. 

(The entire significance of the evolutionary method in 
biology and social history is that every distinct organ, struc- 
ture, or formation, every grouping of cells or elements, has 
to be treated as an instrument of adjustment or adaptation 
to a particular environing situation. , Its meaning, its char- 
acter, its value, is known when, and only when, it is consid- 
ered as an arrangement for meeting the conditions involved 
in some specific situation. This analysis of value is carried 
out in detail by tracing successive stages of development — 
by endeavoring to locate the particular situation in which 
each structure has its origin, and by tracing the successive 
modifications through which, in response to changing media, 
it has reached its present conformation. 1 To persist in con- 
demning natural history from the standpoint of what natural 
history meant before it identified itself with an evolutionary 
process is not so much to exclude the natural-history stand- 
point from philosophic consideration as it is to evince igno- 
rance of what it signifies. 

Psychology as the natural history of the various atti- 
tudes and structures through which experiencing passes, as 
an account of the conditions under which this or that state 
emerges, and of the way in which it influences, by stimula- 
tion or inhibition, production of other states or conforma- 
tions of consciousness, is indispensable to logical evaluation, 
the moment we treat logical theory as an account of think- 

1 See Philosophical Review, Vol. XI, pp. 117-20. 



16 Studies in Logical Theory 

ing as a mode of adaptation to its own generating condi- 
tions, and judge its validity by reference to its efficiency in 
meeting its problems. The historical point of view describes 
the sequence; the normative follows the sequence to its 
conclusion, and then turns back and judges each historical 
step by viewing it in reference to its own outcome. 1 

In the course of changing experience we keep our balance 
as we move from situations of an affectional quality to those 
which are practical or appreciative or reflective, because we 
bear constantly in mind the context in which any particular 
distinction presents itself. As we submit each characteristic 
function and situation of experience to our gaze, we find it 
has a dual aspect. Wherever there is striving there are 
obstacles ; wherever there is affection there are persons who 
are attached; wherever there is doing there is accomplish- 
ment; wherever there is appreciation there is value ^wher- 
ever there is thinking there is material-in-question. We 
keep our footing as we move from one attitude to another, 
from one characteristic quality to another, because we know 
the position occupied in the whole growth by the particular 
function in which we are engaged, and the position within 
the function of the particular element that engages us. 

The distinction between each attitude and function and 
its predecessor and successor is serial, dynamic, operative. 
The distinctions within any given operation or function are 
structural, contemporaneous, and distributive^] Thinking 
follows, we will say, striving, and doing follows thinking. 
Each in the fulfilment of its own function inevitably calls out 
its successor. But coincident, simultaneous, and correspond- 
ent within doing, is the distinction of doer and of deed; 
within the function of thought, of thinking and material 
thought upon; within the function of striving, of obstacle 

i See statements regarding the psychological and the logical in The Child and 
the Curriculum, pp. 28, 29. 



General Problem of Logical Theory 17 

of aim, of means and end. We keep our paths straight 
because we do not confuse the sequential, efficient, and 
functional relationship of types of experience with the con- 
temporaneous, correlative, and structural distinctions of ele- 
ments within a given function. In the seeming maze of 
endless confusion and unlimited shif tings, we find our way 
by the means of the stimulations and checks occurring within 
the process we are actually engaged with. We do not con- 
trast or confuse a condition or state which is an element in 
the formation of one operation with the status or element 
which is one of the distributive terms of another function. 
If we do, we have at once an insoluble, because meaningless, 
problem upon our hands. 

Now the epistemological logician deliberately shuts him- 
self off from those cues and checks upon which the plain 
man instinctively relies, and which the scientific man 
deliberately searches for and adopts as constituting his 
technique. Consequently he is likely to set the sort of object 
or material which has place and significance only in one of 
the serial functional situations of experience, over against 
the active attitude which describes part of the structural 
constitution of another situation; or with equal lack of 
justification to assimilate terms characteristic of different 
stages to one another. He sets the agent, as he is found 
in the intimacy of love' or appreciation, over against the 
externality of the fact, as that is defined within the reflect- 
ive process. He takes the material which thought selects 
as its own basis for further procedure to be identical with 
the significant content which it secures for itself in the 
successful pursuit of its aim; and this in turn he regards 
as the material which was presented at the outset, and whose 
peculiarities were the express means of awakening thought. 
iHe identifies the final deposit of the thought-function with 
its own generating antecedent, and then disposes of the 



18 Studies in Logical Theory 

resulting surd by reference to some metaphysical con- 
sideration, which remains when logical inquiry, when science 
(as interpreted by him), has done its work. He does this, 
not because he prefers confusion to order, or error to truth, 
but simply because, when the chain of historic sequence is 
cut, the vessel of thought is afloat to veer upon a sea without 
soundings or moorings. There are but two alternatives: 
either there is an object "in itself" of thought "in itself," 
or else there are a series of values which vary with the vary- 
ing functions to which they belong. ^'-Jf the latter, the only 
way these values can be defined is by discriminating the 
functions to which they belong. It is only conditions 
relative to a specific period or epoch of development in a 
cycle of experience which enables one to tell what to do 
next, or to estimate the value and meaning of what is already 
done^I And the epistemological logician, in choosing to take 
his question as one of thought which has its own form just 
as " thought," apart from the limits of the special work it has 
to do, has deprived himself of these supports and stays. 

The problem of logic has a more general and a more 
specific phase. In its generic form, it deals with this ques- 
tion : How does one type of functional situation and attitude 
in experience pass out of and into another; for example, the 
technological or utilitarian into the aesthetic, the aesthetic 
into the religious, the religious into the scientific, and this 
into the socio-ethical and so on ? The more specific question 
is: How does the particular functional situation termed the 
reflective behave ?j How shall we describe it? What in 
detail are its diverse contemporaneous distinctions, or divi- 
sions of labor, its correspondent statuses; in what specific 
ways do these operate with reference to each other so as 
i to effect the specific aim which is proposed by the needs of 
the affair? 

This chapter may be brought to conclusion by reference 



General Problem of Logical Theory 19 

to the more alternate value of the logic of experience, of 
logic taken in its wider sense ; that is, as an account of the 
sequence of the various typical functions or situations of 
experience in their determining relations to one another. 
Philosophy, denned as such a logic, makes no pretense to 
be an account of a closed and finished universe. Its business 
is not to secure or guarantee any particular reality or value. 
Per contra, it gets the significance of a method. The right 
relationship and adjustment of the various typical phases of 
experience to one another is a problem felt in every depart- 
ment of life. Intellectual rectification and control of these 
adjustments cannot fail to reflect itself in an added clearness 
and security on the practical side. It may be that general 
logic can not become an instrument in the immediate direc- 
tion of the activities of science or art or industry ; but it is 
of value in criticising and in organizing the tools of 
immediate research in these lines. It also has direct sig- 
nificance in the valuation for social or life-purposes of results 
achieved in particular branches. Much of the immediate 
business of life is badly done because we do not know in 
relation to its congeners the organic genesis and outcome 
of the work that occupies us. The manner and degree of 
appropriation of the values achieved in various departments 
of social interest and vocation are partial and faulty because 
we are not clear as to the due rights and responsibilities of 
one function of experience in reference to others. 

The value of research for social progress; the bearing of 
psychology upon educational procedure ; the mutual relations 
of fine and industrial art; the question of the extent and 
nature of specialization in science in comparison with the 
claims of applied science ; the adjustment of religious aspira- 
tions to scientific statements; the justification of a refined 
culture for a few in face of economic insufficiency for the 
mass — such are a few of the many social questions whose 



20 Studies in Logical Theory 

final answer depends upon the possession and use of a general 
logic of experience as a method of inquiry and interpreta- 
tion. I do not say that headway cannot be made in such 
' questions apart from the method indicated: a logic of 
genetic experience. But unless we have a critical and 
assured view of the juncture in which and with reference to 
which a given attitude or interest arises, unless we know the 
service it is thereby called upon to perform and hence the 
organs or methods by which it best functions in that service, 
our progress is impeded and irregular.^ IVe take a part for a 
whole, a means for an end, or attack wholesale some other 
interest because it interferes with the deified sway of the 
one we have selected as ultimate. -<A clear and comprehen- 
sive consensus of social conviction, and a consequent con- 
centrated and economical direction of effort, are assured only 
as there is some way of locating the position and role of each 
typical interest and occupation in experience. The domain 
of opinion is one of conflict ; its rule is arbitrary and costly. 
Only intellectual method affords a substitute for opinion. 
The general logic of experience can alone do for the region 
of social values and aims what the natural sciences after cen- 
turies of struggle are doing for activity in the physical 
realm. 

This does not mean that systems of philosophy which 
have attempted to state the nature either of thought and of 
reality at large, apart from limits of particular crises in the 
growth of experience, have been worthless — though it does 
mean that their industry has been somewhat misapplied. 
The unfolding of metaphysical theory has made large 
contributions to positive evaluations of the typical situations 
and relationships of experience — even when its conscious 
intention has been quite otherwise. Every system of phi- 
losophy is itself a mode of reflection; consequently (if our 
main contention be true), it too has been evoked out of 



General Problem of Logical Theory 21 

specific social antecedents, and has had its use as a response 
to them. It has effected something in modifying the 
situation within which it found its origin. It may not 
have solved the problem which it consciously put itself; 
in many cases we may freely admit that the question put 
has afterward been found to be so wrongly put as to be 
insoluble. Yet exactly the same thing is true, in precisely 
the same sense, in the history of science. For this reason, 
if for no other, it is impossible for the scientific man to 
cast the first stone at the philosopher. 

The progress of science in any branch continually brings 
with it a realization that problems in their previous form of 
statement are insoluble because put in terms of unreal con- 
ditions; because the real conditions have been mixed up 
with mental artifacts or misconstructions. Every science is 
continually learning that its supposed solutions are only 
apparent, because the "solution" solves, not the actual prob- 
lem, but one which has been made up. But the very putting 
of the question, the very giving of the wrong answer, in- 
duces modification of existing intellectual habits, stand- 
points, and aims. Wrestling with the problem, there is 
evolution of new forms of technique to control its treatment, 
there is search for new facts, institution of new types of 
experimentation; there is gain in the methodic control of * 
experience. And all this is progress. It is only the worn- 
out cynic, the devitalized sensualist, and the fanatical dog- 
matist who interpret the continuous change of science as 
proving that, since each successive statement is wrong, the 
whole record is error and folly ; and that the present truth 
is only the error not yet found out. Such draw the moral 
of caring naught for all these things, or of flying to some 
external authority which will deliver once for all the fixed 
and unchangeable truth. But historic philosophy even in 
its aberrant forms has proved a factor in the valuation of 



22 Studies in Logical Theory 

experience ; it has brought problems to light, it has provoked 
intellectual conflicts without which values are only nominal; 
even through its would-be absolutistic isolations, it has se- 
cured recognition of mutual dependencies and reciprocal 
reinforcements. Yet if it can define its work more clearly, it 
can concentrate its energy upon its own characteristic prob- 
lem: the genesis and functioning in experience of various 
typical interests and occupations with reference to one 
another. 



11 

THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER : THE ANTECEDENT 
CONDITIONS AND CUES OF THE THOUGHT-FUNCTION 

We have discriminated logic in its wider sense, concerned 
with the sequence of characteristic functions and attitudes 
in experience, from logic in its stricter meaning, concerned 
in particular with description and interpretation of the func- 
tion of reflective thought. We must avoid yielding to the 
temptation of identifying logic with either of these to the 
exclusion of the other ; or of supposing that it is possible to 
isolate one finally from the other. The more detailed treat- 
ment of the organs and methods of reflection cannot be 
carried on with security save as we have a correct idea of 
the historic position of reflection in the evolving of expe- 
rience. Yet it is impossible to determine this larger placing, 
save as we have a defined and analytic, as distinct from 
a merely vague and gross, view of what we mean by reflec- 
tion — what is its actual constitution. It is necessary to 
work back and forth between the larger and the narrower 
fields, transforming every increment upon one side into a 
method of work upon the other, and thereby testing it. 
The apparent confusion of existing logical theory, its uncer- 
tainty as to its own bounds and limits, its tendency to oscillate 
from larger questions of the inherent worth of judgment and 
validity of inference over to details of scientific technique, 
and to translation of distinctions of formal logic into terms 
of an investigatory or verificatory process, are indications of 
the need of this double movemenTA 

In the next three chapters it is proposed to take up some 
of the considerations that lie on the borderland between the 

23 



24 Studies in Logical Theory 

larger and the narrower conceptions of logical theory. I 
shall discuss t]*6 locus of the function of thought, so far as 
such locus enables us to select and characterize some of the 
most fundamental distinctions, or divisions of labor, within 
the reflective process. In taking up the problem of the 
subject-matter of thought, I shall try to make clear that it 
assumes three quite distinct forms according to the epochal 
moment reached in transformation of experience ; and that 
continual confusion and inconsistency are introduced when 
these respective meanings are not identified and described 
according to their respective geneses and places. I shall 
attempt to show that we must consider subject-matter from 
the standpoint, first, of the antecedents or conditions that 
evoke thought ; second, of the datum or immediate material 
presented to thought; and, third, of the proper content of 
thought. Of these three distinctions the first, that of ante- 
cedent and stimulus, clearly refers to the situation that is 
immediately prior to the thought -function as such. The 
second, that of datum or immediately given matter, refers to 
a distinction which is made within the thought-process as a 
part of and for the sake of its own modus operandi. It is a 
status in the scheme of thinking. The third, that of content 
or object, refers to the progress actually made in any thought- 
function; the material which is organized into the thought- 
situation, so far as this has fulfilled its purpose. It goes 
without saying that these are to be discriminated as stages of 
a life-process in the natural history of experience, not as 
ready-made or ontological; it is contended that, save as they 
are differentiated in connection with well-defined historical 
stages, they are either lumped off as equivalents, or else 
treated as absolute divisions — or as each by turns, accord- 
ing to the exigencies of the particular argument. In fact, 
this chapter will get at the matter of preliminary conditions 
of thought indirectly rather than directly, by indicating the 



Conditions and Cues of Thought-Function 25 

contradictory positions into which one of the most vigorous 
and acute of modern logicians, Lotze, has been forced through 
failing to define logical distinctions in terms of the history 
of readjustment of experience, and therefore endeavoring to 
interpret certain notions as absolute instead of as periodic 
and methodological. 

Before passing directly to the exposition and criticism of 
Lotze, it will be well, however, to take the matter in a some- 
what freer way. We cannot approach logical inquiry in a 
wholly direct and uncompromised manner. Of necessity we 
bring to it certain distinctions — distinctions partly the out- 
come of concrete experience; partly due to the logical 
theory which has got embodied in ordinary language and in 
current intellectual habits ; partly results of deliberate scien- 
tific and philosophic inquiry. These more or less ready- 
made results are resources ; they are the only weapons with 
which we can attack the new problem. Yet they are full 
of unexamined assumptions; they commit us to all sorts 
of logically predetermined conclusions. In one sense our 
study of the new subject-matter, let us say logical theory, is 
in truth only a review, a re-testing and criticising of the 
intellectual standpoints and methods which we bring with 
us to the study. 

Everyone comes with certain distinctions already made 
between the subjective and the objective, between the physi- 
cal and the psychical, between the intellectual and the factual. 
(1) We have learned to regard the region of emotional dis- 
turbance, of uncertainty and aspiration, as belonging some- 
how peculiarly to ourselves; we have learned to set over 
against this a world of observation and of valid thought as 
something unaffected by our moods, hopes, fears, and opin- 
ions. (2) We have also come to distinguish between what is 
immediately present in our experience and the past and the 
future; we contrast the realms of memory and anticipation 



26 Studies in Logical Theory 

of sense-perception; the given with the ideal. (3) We are 
confirmed in a habit of distinguishing between what we 
call actual fact and our mental attitude toward that fact — 
the attitude of surmise or wonder or reflective investigation. 
While one of the aims of logical theory is precisely to make 
us critically conscious of the significance and bearing of 
these various distinctions, to change them from ready-made 
assumptions into controlled constructs, our mental habits are 
so set that they tend to have their own way with us; and 
we read into logical theory conceptions that were formed 
before we had even dreamed of the logical undertaking 
which after all has for its business to assign to the terms in 
question their proper meaning. \ 

We find in Lotze an unusually explicit inventory of these 
various preliminary distinctions; and an unusually serious 
effort to deal with the problems which arise from introducing 
them into the structure of logical theory. (1) He expressly 
separates the matter of logical worth from that of psycholo- 
gical genesis. He consequently abstracts the subject-matter 
of logic as such wholly from the question of historic locus 
and situs. (2) He agrees with common-sense in holding that 
logical thought is reflective and thus presupposes a given 
material. He occupies himself with the nature of the ante- 
cedent conditions. (3) He wrestles with the problem of 
how a material formed prior to thought and irrespective of 
it can yet afford it stuff upon which to exercise itself. (4) 
He expressly raises the question of how thought working 
independently and from without upon a foreign material can 
shape the latter into results which are valid — that is, 
objectiver- 

If his discussion is successful ; if Lotze can provide the 
intermediaries which span the gulf between an independent 
thought-material and an independent thought- activity ; if 
he can show that the question of the origin of thought- 



Conditions and Cues of Thought-Function 27 

material and of thought-activity is irrelevant to the question 
of its worth, we shall have to surrender the position already 
taken. But if we find that Lotze's elaborations only elaborate 
the same fundamental difficulty, presenting it now in this 
light and now in that, but never effecting more than pre- 
senting the problem as if it were its own solution, we shall 
be confirmed in our idea of the need of considering logical 
questions from a different point of view. If we find that, 
whatever his formal treatment, he always, as matter of 
fact, falls back upon some organized situation or function as 
the source of both the specific thought-material and the 
specific thought- activity in correspondence with each other, 
we shall have in so far an elucidation and even a corrobora- 
tion of our theory. 

1. We begin with the question of the material antecedents 
of thought — antecedents which condition reflection, and 
which call it out as reaction or response, by giving it its cue. 
Lotze differs from many logicians of the same type, in 
affording us an explicit account of these antecedents. The 
ultimate material antecedents of thought are found in impres- 
sions, which are due to external objects as stimuli. Taken 
in themselves, these impressions are mere psychical states or 
events. They exist in us side by side, or one after the other, 
according as the objects which excite them operate simul- 
taneously or successively. The occurrence of these various 
psychical states is not, however, entirely dependent upon the 
presence of the exciting thing. After a state has once been 
excited, it gets the power of reawakening other states which 
have accompanied it or followed it. The associative mechan- 
ism of revival plays a part. If we had a complete knowl- 
edge of both the stimulating object and its effects, and of 
the details of the associative mechanism, we should be able 
from given data to predict the whole course of any given 
train or current of ideas (for the impressions as conjoined 



28 Studies in Logical Theory 

simultaneously or successively become ideas and a current of 



Taken in itself, a sensation or impression is nothing but 
a "state of our consciousness, a mood of ourselves." Any 
given current of ideas is a necessary sequence of existences 
(just as necessary as any succession of material events), 
happening in some particular sensitive soul or organism. 
"Just because, under their respective conditions, every 
such series of ideas hangs together by the same necessity 
and law as every other, there would be no ground for mak- 
ing any such distinction of value as that between truth 
and untruth, thus placing one group in opposition to all the 
others." ! 

2. Thus far, as the last quotation clearly indicates, there 
is no question of reflective thought, and hence no question 
of logical theory. But further examination reveals a peculiar 
property of the current of ideas. Some ideas are merely 
coincident, while others may be termed coherent. That is 
to say, the exciting causes of some of our simultaneous and 
successive ideas really belong together; while in other cases 
they simply happen to act at the same time, without there 
being a real connection between them. By the associative 
mechanism, however, both the coherent and the merely coin- 
cident combinations recur. The first type of recurrence 
supplies positive material for knowledge ; the second gives 
occasion for error./ 

3. It is a peculiar mixture of the coincident and the 
coherent which sets the peculiar problem of reflective 
thought. The business of thought is to recover and con- 
firm the coherent, the really connected, adding to its 
reinstatement an accessory justifying notion of the real 
g^ nd of coherence, while it eliminates the coincident as 

t 

rzE, Logic (translation, Oxford, 1888), Vol. I, p. 2. For the preceding exposi- 
ti V r \ I, pp. 1, 2, 13, 14, 37, 38 ; also Microkosmus, Book V, chap. 4. 



Conditions and Cues of Thought-Function 29 

r " - 

such. While the mere current of ideas is something- which 
just happens within us, the process of elimination and of 
confirmation by means of statement of real ground and 
basis of connection is an activity which mind as such exer- 
cises. It is this distinction which marks off thought as 
activity from any psychical event and from the associative 
mechanism as receptive happenings. One is concerned 
with mere de facto coexistences and sequences ; the other 
with the worth of these combinations. 1 

Consideration of the peculiar work of thought in going 
over, sorting out, and determining various ideas according 
to a standard of value will occupy us in our next chapter. 
Here we are concerned with the material antecedents of 
thought as they are described by Lotze. At first glance, he 
seems to propound a satisfactory theory. He avoids the 
extravagancies of transcendental logic, which assumes that 
all the matter of experience is determined from the very 
start by rational thought; and he also avoids the pitfall 
of purely empirical logic, which makes no distinction 
between the mere occurrence and association of ideas and 
the real worth and validity of the various conjunctions thus 
produced. JHe allows unreflective experience, defined in 
terms of sensations and their combinations, to provide ma- 
terial conditions for thinking, while he reserves for thought 
a distinctive work and dignity of its own. Sense-experience 
furnishes the antecedents; thought has to introduce and 
develop systematic connection — -rationality. 

A further analysis of Lotze's treatment may, however, 
lead us to believe that his statement is riddled through and 
through with inconsistencies and self-contradictions; that, 
indeed, any one part of it can be maintained only by the 
denial of some other portion. 

1. The impression is the ultimate antecedent in ii st 

1 Lotze, Logic, Vol. I, pp. 6, 7. 



30 Studies in Logical Theory 

or crudest form (according to the angle from which one 
views it). It is that which has never felt, for good or for bad, 
the influence of thought. Combined into ideas, these impres- 
sions stimulate or arouse the activities of thought, which 
are forthwith directed upon them. As the recipient of the 
activity which they have excited and brought to bear upon 
themselves, they furnish also the material content of thought 
— its actual stuff. As Lotze says over and over again: "It 
is the relations themselves already subsisting between 
impressions, when we become conscious of them, by which 
the action of thought which is never anything but reaction, 
is attracted; and this action consists merely in interpreting 
relations which we find existing between our passive impres- 
sions into aspects of the matter of impressions." * And 
again: 2 "Thought can make no difference where it finds 
none already in the matter of the impressions." And 
again: 3 "The possibility and the success of thought's pro- 
cedure depends upon this original constitution and organi- 
zation of the whole world of ideas, a constitution which, 
though not necessary in thought, is all the more necessary 
to make thinking possible." 

The impressions and ideas play a versatile role ; they now 
assume the part of ultimate antecedents and provocative 
conditions; of crude material; and somehow, when arranged, 
of content for thought. This very versatility awakens 
suspicion. 

While the impression is merely subjective and a bare state 
of our own consciousness, yet it is determined, both as to its 
existence and as to its relation to other similar existences, 
by external objects as stimuli, if not as causes. It is also 
determined by a psychical mechanism so thoroughly objec- 
tive or regular in its workings as to give the same necessary 

i Lotze, Logic (translation, Oxford, 1888), Vol. I, p. 25. 
2 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 36. 3 Ibid. 



Conditions and Cues of Thought-Function 31 

character to the current of ideas that is possessed by any phys- 
ical sequence. Thus that which is " nothing but a state of 
our consciousness " turns out straightway to be a specifically 
determined objective fact in a system of facts. 

That this absolute transformation is a contradiction is no 
clearer than that just such a contradiction is indispensable 
to Lotze. _If the impressions were nothing but states of 
consciousness, moods of ourselves, bare psychical existences, 
it is sure enough that we should never even know them to be 
such, to say nothing of conserving them as adequate condi- 
tions and material for thought. It is only by treating them 
as real facts in a real world, and only by carrying over into 
them, in some assumed and unexplained way, the capacity 
of representing the cosmic facts which arouse them, that 
impressions or ideas come in any sense within the scope of 
thought. But if the antecedents are really impressions-in- 
their-objective-setting, then Lotze' s whole way of distin- 
guishing thought-worth from mere existence or event without 
objective significance must be radically modified. 

The implication that impressions have actually a matter 
or quality or meaning of their own becomes explicit when 
we refer to Lotze's theory that the immediate antecedent of 
thought is found in the matter of ideas. When thought is 
said to "take cognizance of relations which its own activity 
does not originate, but which have been prepared for it by 
the unconscious mechanism of the psychic states," l the attri- 
bution of objective content, of reference and meaning to 
ideas, is unambiguous. The idea forms a most convenient 
half-way house for Lotze. On one hand, as absolutely prior 
to thought, as material antecedent condition, it is merely 
psychical, a bald subjective event. But as subject-matter for 
thought, as antecedent which affords stuff for thought's exer- 
cise, it is meaning, characteristic quality of content. 

l Microkosmus, Book V, chap. 4. 



32 Studies in Logical Theory 

Although we have been told that the impression is a mere 
receptive irritation without participation of mental activity, 
we are not surprised, in view of this capacity of ideas, to learn 
that the mind actually has a determining share in both the re- 
ception j}f stimuli and in their further associative combina- 
tions. : The subject always enters into the presentation of any 
mental object, even the sensational, to say nothing of the per- 
ceptional and the imaged. The perception of a given state of 
things is possible only on the assumption that " the perceiv- 
ing subject is at once enabled and compelled by its own 
nature to combine the excitations which reach it from 
objects into those forms which it is to perceive in the objects, 
and which it supposes itself simply to receive from them.'y 

It is only by continual transition from impression and 
ideas as mental states and events to ideas as cognitive (or 
logical) objects or contents, that Lotze bridges the gulf from 
bare exciting antecedent to concrete material conditions of 
thought. This contradiction, again, is necessary to Lotze's 
standpoint. To set out frankly with "meanings" as ante- 
cedents would demand reconsideration of the whole view- 
point, which supposes that the difference between the logical 
and its antecedent is a matter of the difference between worth 
and mere existence or occurrence. It would indicate that 
since meaning or value is already there, the task of thought 
must be that of the transformation or reconstruction of worth 
through an intermediary process of valuation. On the other 
hand, to stick by the standpoint of mere existence is not to 
get anything which can be called even antecedent of thought. 

2. Why is there a task of transformation? Considera- 
tion of the material in its function of evoking thought, giv- 
ing it its cue, will serve to complete the picture of the con- 
tradiction and of the real facts. It is the conflict between 
ideas as merely coincident and ideas as coherent that con- 

i Logic, Vol. II, p. 235 ; see the whole discussion, §§ 325 through 327. 



Conditions and Cues of Thought-Function 33 

stitutes the need which provokes the response of thought. 
Here Lotze vibrates (a) between considering coincidence and 
coherence as both affairs of existence of psychical events; 
(6) considering coincidence as purely psychical and coher- 
ence as at least quasi-logical, and (c) the inherent logic which 
makes them both determinations within the sphere of reflect- 
ive thought. In strict accordance with his own premises, 
coincidence and coherence both ought to be mere peculiarities 
of the current of ideas as events within ourselves. But so 
taken the distinction becomes absolutely meaningless. 
1 Events do not cohere ; at the most certain sets of them happen 
more or less frequently than other sets ; the only intelligible 
difference is one of repetition of coincidence. And even this 
attributes to an event the supernatural trait of reappearing 
after it has disappeared. Even coincidence has to be 
defined in terms of relation of the objects which are sup- 
posed to excite the psychical events that happen together. 

As recent psychological discussion has made clear enough, 
it is the matter, meaning, or content, of ideas that is asso- 
ciated, not the ideas as states or existences. Take such an 
idea as sun-revolving-about-earth. We may say it means 
the conjunction of various sense-impressions, but it is conjunc- 
tion, or mutual reference, of attributes that we have in mind 
in the assertion. It is absolutely certain that our psychical 
image of the sun is not psychically engaged in revolving 
about our psychical image of the earth. It would be 
amusing if such were the case; theaters and all dramatic 
representations would be at a discount, [in truth, sun- 
revolving-about-earth is a single meaning or idea; it is a 
unified subject-matter within which certain distinctions of 
reference appear. It is concerned with what we intend when 
we think earth and sun, and think them in their relation to 
each other. It is really a specification or direction of how 
to think when we have occasion to think a certain subject- 



34 Studies in Logical Theory 

matter. To treat the origin of this mutual reference as if it 
were simply a case of conjunction of ideas produced by con- 
ditions of original psycho-physical irritation and association 
is a profound case of the psychological fallacy. We may, 
indeed, analyze an experience and find that it had its origin 
in certain conditions of the sensitive organism, in certain 
peculiarities of perception and of association, and hence con- 
clude that the belief involved in it was not justified by the 
facts themselves. But the significance of the belief in sun- 
revolving-about-earth as an item of the experience of those 
who meant it, consisted precisely in the fact that it was taken 
not as a mere association of feelings, but as a definite portion 
of the whole structure of objective experience, guaranteed 
by other parts of the fabric, and lending its support and 
giving its tone to them. It was to them part of the experi- 
ence-frame of things — of the real universe. 

Put the other way, if such an instance meant a mere con- 
junction of psychical states, there would be in it absolutely 
nothing to evoke thought. Each idea as event, as Lotze 
himself points out (Vol. I, p. 2), may be regarded as ade- 
quately and necessarily determined to the place it occupies. 
There is absolutely no question on the side of events of mere 
coincidence versus genuine connection. As event, it is there 
and it belongs there. We cannot treat something as at once 
bare fact of existence and as problematic subject-matter of 
logical inquiry. To take the reflective point of view is to 
consider the matter in a totally new light ; as Lotze says, it is 
to raise the question of rightful claims to a position or relation. 

The point becomes clearer when we contrast coincidence 
with connection. To consider coincidence as simply psy- 
chical, and coherence as at least quasi-logical, is to put the 
two on such different bases that no question of contrasting 
them can arise. The coincidence which precedes a valid or 
grounded coherence (the conjunction which as coexistence 



Conditions and Cues of Thought-Function 35 

of objects and sequence of acts is perfectly adequate) never 
is, as antecedent, the coincidence which is set over against 
coherence.^ The side-by-sideness of books on my book- 
shelf, the succession of noises that rise through my window, 
do not as such trouble me logically. They do not appear as 
errors or even as problems. One coexistence is just as good 
as any other until some new point of view, or new end, pre- 
sents itself. If it is a question of the convenience of arrange- 
ment of books, then the value of their present collocation 
becomes a problem. Then I may contrast their present bare 
conjunction with a scheme of possible coherence. If I regard 
the sequence of noises as a case of articulate speech, their 
order becomes important — it is a problem to be determined. 
The inquiry whether a given combination means only appar- 
ent or real connection, shows that reflective inquiry is already 
going on. Does this phase of the moon really mean rain, 
or does it just happen that the rain-storm comes when the 
moon has reached this phase ? To ask such questions shows 
that a certain portion of the universe of experience is sub- 
jected to critical analysis for purposes of definitive restate- 
ment. The tendency to regard one combination as bare 
conjunction or mere coincidence is absolutely a part of the 
movement of mind in its search for the real connection. 

If coexistence as such is to be set over against coherence 
as such, as the non-logical against the logical, then, since our 
whole spatial universe is one of collocation, and since thought 
in this universe can never get farther than substituting one 
collocation for another, the whole realm of space-experience 
is condemned off-hand and in perpetuity to anti-rationality. 
But, in truth, coincidence as over against coherence, conjunc- 
tion as over against connection, is just suspected coherence, 
one which is under the fire of active inquiry. The distinc- 
tion is one which arises only within the grasp of the logical 
or reflective function.^) 



36 Studies in Logical Theory 

3. This brings us explicitly to the fact that there is no 
such thing as either coincidence or coherence in terms of the 
elements or meanings contained in any couple or pair of 
ideas taken by itself. It is only when they are co-factors 
in a situation or function which includes more than either 
the "coincident" or the "coherent" and more than the arith- 
metical sum of the two, that thought's activity can be 
evoked. Lotze is continually in this dilemma: Thought 
either shapes its own material or else just accepts it. In 
the first case (since Lotze cannot rid himself of the pre- 
sumption that thought must have a fixed ready-made ante- 
cedent) its activity can only alter this stuff and thus lead the 
mind farther away from reality. But if thought just accepts 
its material, how can there be any distinctive aim or activity 
of thought at all? As we have seen, Lotze endeavors to 
escape this dilemma by supposing that, while thought receives 
its material, it yet checks it up: it eliminates certain portions 
of it and reinstates others, plus the stamp and seal of its own 
validity. 

Lotze objects most strenuously to the notion that thought 
awaits its subject-matter with certain ready-made modes of 
apprehension. This notion would raise the insoluble ques- 
tion of how thought contrives to bring the matter of each 
impression under that particular form which is appropriate 
to it (Vol. I, p. 24). But he has not really avoided the diffi- 
culty. How does thought know which of the combinations 
are merely coincident and which are merely coherent ? How 
does it know which to eliminate as irrelevant and which to 
confirm as grounded? Either this evaluation is an impo- 
sition of its own, or else gets its cue and clue from the 
subject-matter. Now, if the coincident and the coherent 
taken in and of themselves are competent to give this direc- 
tion, they are already practically labeled. The further work 
of thought is one of supererogation. It has at most barely 



Conditions and Cues of Thought-Function 37 

to note and seal the material combinations that are already 
there. Such a view clearly renders thought's work as 
unnecessary in form as it is futile in force. 

But there is no alternative in this dilemma except to 
recognize that an entire situation of experience, within which 
are both that afterward found to be mere coincidence and 
that found to be real connection, actually provokes thought. 
It is only as an experience previously accepted comes up in 
its wholeness against another one equally integral ; and only 
as some larger experience dawns which requires each as a 
part of itself and yet within which the required factors show 
themselves mutually incompatible, that thought arises. It 
is not bare coincidence, or bare connection, or bare addition 
of one to the other, that excites thought. It is a situation 
which is organized or constituted as a whole, and which yet 
is falling to pieces in its parts — a situation which is in con- 
flict within itself — that arouses the search to find what really 
goes together and a correspondent effort to shut out what 
only seemingly belongs together. And real coherence means 
precisely capacity to exist within the comprehending whole. 
It is a case of the psychologist's fallacy to read back into the 
preliminary situation those distinctions of mere conjunction 
of material and of valid relationship which get existence, to 
say nothing of fixation, only within the thought-process. 

We must not leave this phase of the discussion, however, 
until it is quite clear that our objection is not to Lotze's 
position that reflective thought arises from an antecedent 
which is not reflectional in character ; nor yet to his idea that 
this antecedent has a certain structure and content of its own 
setting the peculiar problem which evokes thought and gives 
the cue to its specific activities. On the contrary, it is this 
latter point upon which we would insist; and, by insisting, 
point out, negatively, that this view is absolutely inconsist- 
ent with Lotze's theory that psychical impressions and ideas 



38 Studies in Logical Theoey 

are the true antecedents of thought ; and, positively, that it is 
the situation as a whole, and not any one isolated part of it, 
or distinction within it, that calls forth and directs thinking. 
We must beware the fallacy of assuming that some one ele- 
ment in the prior situation in isolation or detachment induces 
the thought which in reality comes forth only from the 
whole disturbed situation. On the negative side, character- 
izations of impression and idea (whether as mental contents 
or as psychical existences) are distinctions which arise only 
within reflection upon the situation which is the genuine 
antecedent of thought; while the distinction of psychical 
existences from external existences arises only within a 
highly elaborate technical reflection — that of the psycholo- 
gist as such. 1 Positively, it is the whole dynamic experience 
with its qualitative and pervasive identity of value, and its 
inner distraction, its elements at odds with each other, in 
tension against each other, contending each for its proper 
placing and relationship, that generates the thought- 
situation. 

From this point of view, at this period of development, 
the distinctions of objective and subjective have a charac- 
teristic meaning. The antecedent, to repeat, is a situation 
in which the various factors are actively incompatible with 
each other, and which yet in and through the striving tend to 
a re-formation of the whole and to a restatement of the parts. 
This situation as such is clearly objective. It is there ; it is 
there as a whole; the various parts are there; and their 

J The emphasis here is upon the term u existences," and in its plural form. 
Doubtless the distinction of some experiences as belonging to me, as mine in a 
peculiarly intimate way, from others as chiefly concerning other persons, or as hav- 
ing to do with things, is an early one. But this is a distinction of concern, of value. 
The distinction referred to above is that of making an object, or presentation, out of 
this felt type of value, and thereby breaking it up into distinct "events," etc., with 
their own laws of inner connection. This is the work of psychological analysis. 
Upon the whole matter of the psychical I am glad to refer to Professor George H. 
Mead's article entitled "The Definition of the Psychical," Vol. Ill, Part II, of The 
Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago. 



Conditions and Cues of Thought-Function 39 

active incompatibility with one another is there. Nothing 
is conveyed at this point by asserting that any particular part 
of the situation is illusory or subjective, or mere appearance ; 
or that any other is truly real. It is the further work of 
thought to exclude some of the contending factors from mem- 
bership in experience, and thus to relegate them to the 
sphere of the merely subjective. But just at this epoch 
the experience exists as one of vital and active confusion 
and conflict. The conflict is not only objective in a de facto 
sense (that is, really existent), but is objective in a logical 
sense as well ; it is just this conflict which effects the transi- 
tion into the thought-situation — this, in turn, being only a 
constant movement toward a defined equilibrium. The con- 
flict has objective logical value because it is the antecedent 
condition and cue of thought. 

Every reflective attitude and function, whether of naive 
life, deliberate invention, or controlled scientific research, 
has risen through the medium of some such total objective 
situation. The abstract logician may tell us that sensa- 
tions or^ impressions, or associated ideas, or bare physical 
things, or conventional symbols, are antecedent conditions. 
But such statements cannot be verified by reference to a 
single instance of thought in connection with actual practice 
or actual scientific research. Of course, by extreme media- 
tion symbols may become conditions of evoking thought. 
They get to be objects in an active experience. But they are 
stimuli only in case their manipulation to form a new whole 
occasions resistance, and thus reciprocal tension.; Symbols 
and their definitions develop to a point where dealing with 
them becomes itself an experience, having its own identity ; 
just as the handling of commercial commodities, or arrange- 
ment of parts of an invention, is an individual experience. 
There is always as antecedent to thought an experience of some 
subject-matter of the physical or social world, or organized 



40 Studies in Logical Theory 

intellectual world, whose parts are actively at war with each 
other — so much so that they threaten to disrupt the entire 
experience, which accordingly for its own maintenance 
requires deliberate re-definition and re-relation of its ten- 
sional parts. This is the reconstructive process termed 
thinking: the reconstructive situation, with its parts in ten- 
sion and in such movement toward each other as tends to a 
unified experience, is the thought-situation. 

This at once suggests the subjective phase. The situa- 
tion, the experience as such, is objective. There is an 
experience of the confused and conflicting tendencies. But 
just what in particular is objective, just what form the situa- 
tion shall take as an organized harmonious whole, is 
unknown; that is the problem. It is the uncertainty as 
to the what of the experience together with the certainty 
that there is such an experience, that evokes the thought - 
function. Viewed from this standpoint of uncertainty, the 
situation as a whole is subjective. No particular content or 
reference can be asserted off-hand. Definite assertion is 
expressly reserved — it is to be the outcome of the proce- 
dure of reflective inquiry now undertaken. This holding 
off of contents from definitely asserted position, this viewing 
them as candidates for reform, is what we mean at this stage 
of the natural history of thought by the subjective. 

We have followed Lotze through his tortuous course of 
inconsistencies. It is better* perhaps, to run the risk of 
vain repetition, than that of leaving the impression that these 
are mere self-contradictions. It is an idle task to expose 
contradictions save we realize them in relation to the 
fundamental assumption which breeds them. Lotze is 
bound to differentiate thought from its antecedents. He is 
intent to do this, however, through a preconception that 
marks off the thought-situation radically from its predecessor, 
through a difference that is complete, fixed, and absolute, 



Conditions and Cues of Thought-Function 41 

or at large. It is a total contrast of thought as such to 
something else as such that he requires, not a contrast within 
experience of one phase of a process, one period of a rhythm, 
from others. 

This complete and rigid difference Lotze finds in the 
difference between an experience which is mere existence or 
occurrence, and one which has to do with worth, truth, right 
relationship. Now things, objects, have already, implicitly 
at least, determinations of worth, of truth, reality, etc. The 
same is true of deeds, affections, etc., etc. Only states of 
feelings, bare impressions, etc., seem to fulfil the prerequi- 
site of being given as existence, and yet without qualifica- 
tion as to worth, etc. Then the current of ideas offers itself, 
a ready-made stream of events, of existences, which can be 
characterized as wholly innocent of reflective determination, 
and as the natural predecessor of thought. 

But this stream of existences is no sooner there than its 
total incapacity to officiate as material condition and cue of 
thought appears. It is about as relevant as are changes that 
may be happening on the other side of the moon. So, one 
by one, the whole series of determinations of value or 
worth already traced are introduced into the very make- 
up, the inner structure, of what was to be mere existence: 
viz., (1) value as determined by things of whose spatial and 
temporal relations the things are somehow representative; 
(2) hence, value in the shape of meaning — the idea as signifi- 
cant, possessed of quality, and not a mere event ; (3) distin- 
guished values of coincidence and coherence within the 
stream. All these kinds of value are explicitly asserted, as 
we have seen; underlying and running through them all is 
the recognition of the supreme value of a situation which is 
organized as a whole, yet conflicting in its inner constitution. 

These contradictions all arise in the attempt to put 
thought's work, as concerned with value or validity over 



42 Studies in Logical Theoey 

against experience as a mere antecedent happening, or occur- 
rence. Since this contrast arises because of the deeper 
attempt to consider thought as an independent somewhat in 
general which yet, in our experience, is specifically dependent, 
the sole radical avoiding of the contradictions can be found 
in the endeavor to characterize thought as a specific mode of 
valuation in the evolution of significant experience, having its 
own specific occasion or demand, and its own specific place. 
The nature of the organization and value that the antece- 
dent conditions of the thought-function possess is too large 
a question here to enter upon in detail. Lotze himself 
suggests the answer. He speaks of the current of ideas, just 
as a current, supplying us with the "mass of well-grounded 
information which regulates daily life" (Vol. I, p. 4). It 
gives rise to " useful combinations" "correct expectations," 
" seasonable reactions" (Vol. I, p. 7). He speaks of it, 
indeed, as if it were just the ordinary world of naive experi- 
ence, the so-called empirical world, as distinct from the 
world as critically revised and rationalized in scientific and 
philosophic inquiry. The contradiction between this inter- 
pretation and that of a mere stream of psychical impressions 
is only another instance of the difficulty already discussed. 
But the phraseology suggests the type of value possessed by 
it. The unreflective world is a world of practical values ; of 
ends and means, of their effective adaptations; of control 
and regulation of conduct in view of results. Even the most 
purely utilitarian of values are nevertheless values ; not mere 
existences. ; But the world of uncritical experience is saved 
from reduction to just material uses and worths; for it is a 
world of social aims and means, involving at every turn the 
values of affection and attachment, of competition and 
co-operation. It has incorporate also in its own being the 
surprise of aesthetic values — the sudden joy of light, the 
gracious wonder of tone and form. 



Conditions and Cues of Thought-Function 43 

I do not mean that this holds in gross of the unreflect- 
ive world of experience over against the critical thought- 
situation — such a contrast implies the very wholesale, at 
large, consideration of thought which I am striving to avoid. 
Doubtless many and many an act of thought has intervened 
in effecting the organization of our commonest practical- 
affectional-sesthetic region of values. I only mean to 
indicate that thought does take place in such a world; not 
after a world of bare existences lacking value-specifica- 
tions; and that the more systematic reflection we call 
organized science, may, in some fair sense, be said to come 
after, but to come after affectional, artistic, and technological 
interests which have found realization and expression in 
building up a world of values. 

Having entered so far upon a suggestion which cannot be 
followed out, I venture one other digression. The notion 
that value or significance as distinct from mere existentiality 
is the product of thought or reason, and that the source of 
Lotze's contradictions lies in the effort to find any situa- 
tion prior or antecedent to thought, is a familiar one — it is 
even possible that my criticisms of Lotze have been inter- 
preted by some readers in this sense. 1 This is the posi- 
tion frequently called neo-Hegelian (though, I think, with 
questionable accuracy), and has been developed by many 
writers in criticising Kant. This position and that taken 
in this chapter do indeed agree in certain general regards. 
They are at one in denial of the factuality and the possi- 

iWe have a most acute and valuable criticism of Lotze from this point of 
view in Professor Henry Jones, Philosophy of Lotze, 1895. My specific criti- 
cisms agree in the main with his, and I am glad to acknowledge my indebtedness. 
But I cannot agree in the belief that the business of thought is to qualify reality as 
such ; its occupation appears to me to be determining the reconstruction of some 
aspect or portion of reality, and to fall within the course of reality itself ; being, 
indeed, the characteristic medium of its activity. And I cannot agree that reality as 
such, with increasing fulness of knowledge, presents itself as a thought-system, 
though, as just indicated, I have no doubt that reality appears as thought-specifica- 
tions or values, just as it does as affectional and aesthetic and the rest of them. 



44 Studies in Logical Theory 

bility of developing fruitful reflection out of antecedent 
bare existence or mere events. ., They unite in denying that 
there is or can be any such thing as mere existence — phe- 
nomenon unqualified as respects meaning, whether such 
phenomenon be psychic or cosmic. They agree that reflective 
thought grows organically out of an experience which is 
already organized, and that it functions within such an organ- 
ism. But they part company when a fundamental question 
is raised: \ls all organized meaning the work of thought? 
Does it therefore follow that the organization out of which 
reflective thought grows is the work of thought of some 
other type — of Pure Thought, Creative or Constitutive 
Thought, Intuitive Reason, etc. ? I shall indicate briefly 
the reasons for divergence at this point. 

To cover all the practical-social-sesthetic values involved, 
', the term "thought" has to be so stretched that the situation 
might as well be called by any other name that describes 
a typical value of experience. \ More specifically, when the 
difference is minimized between the organized and arranged 
scheme of values out of which reflective inquiry proceeds, 
and reflective inquiry itself (and there can be no other rea- 
son for insisting that the antecedent of reflective thought 
is itself somehow thought), exactly the same type of prob- 
lem recurs that presents itself when the distinction is 
exaggerated into one between bare unvalued existences and 
rational coherent meanings. 

For the more one insists that the antecedent situation is 
constituted by thought, the more one has to wonder why 
another type of thought is required; what need arouses it, 
and how it is possible for it to improve upon the work of 
previous constitutive thought. This difficulty at once forces 
us from a logic of experience as it is concretely experienced 
into a metaphysic of a purely hypothetical experience. Con- 
stitutive thought precedes our conscious thought-operations ; 



Conditions and Cues of Thought-Function 45 

hence it must be the working of some absolute universal 
thought which, unconsciously to our reflection, builds up an 
organized worldL But this recourse only deepens the difficulty. 
How does it happen that the absolute constitutive and intui- 
tive Thought does such a poor and bungling job that it 
requires a finite discursive activity to patch up its products ? 
Here more metaphysic is called for: The Absolute Reason 
is now supposed to work under limiting conditions of finitude, 
of a sensitive and temporal organism. \ The antecedents of 
reflective thought are not, therefore, determinations of 
thought pure and undefiled, but of what thought can do 
when it stoops to assume the yoke of change and of feeling. 
I pass by the metaphysical problem left unsolved by this flight 
into metaphysic: Why and how should a perfect, absolute, 
complete, finished thought find it necessary to submit to 
alien, disturbing, and corrupting conditions in order, in the 
end, to recover through reflective thought in a partial, piece- 
meal, wholly inadequate way what it possessed at the outset 
in a much more satisfactory way ? 

I confine myself to the .logical difficulty. How can 
thought relate itself to the fragmentary sensations, impres- 
sions, feelings, which, in their contrast with and disparity 
from the workings of constitutive thought, mark it off from 
the latter; and which in their connection with its products 
give the cue to reflective thinking? Here we have again 
exactly the problem with which Lotze has been wrestling: 
we have the same insoluble question of the reference of 
thought-activity to a wholly indeterminate unrationalized, 
independent, prior existence.^ The absolute rationalist who 
takes up the problem at this point will find himself forced 
into the same continuous seesaw, the same scheme of alter- 
nate rude robbery and gratuitous gift, that Lotze engaged 
in. The simple fact is thatijiere is just where Lotze himself 
began; he saw that previous transcendental logicians had 



4:6 Studies in Logical Theory 

left untouched the specific question of relation of our sup- 
posedly finite, reflective thought to its own antecedents, and 
he set out to make good the defect. Llf reflective thought is 
required because constitutive thought works under exter- 
nally limiting conditions of sense, then we have some ele- 
ments which are, after all, mere existences, events, etc. Or, 
if they have organization from some other source, and induce 
reflective thought not as bare impressions, etc., but through 
their place in some whole, then we have admitted the possi- 
bility of organic unity in experience, apart from Reason, 
and the ground for assuming Pure Constitutive Thought is 

abandonee^ 

The contradiction appears equally when viewed from the 
side of thought-activity and its characteristic forms. All our 
knowledge, after all, of thought as constitutive is gained by 
consideration of the operations of reflective thought., The 
perfect system of thought is so perfect that it is a luminous, 
harmonious whole, without definite parts or distinctions — 
or, if there are such, it is only reflection that brings them 
out. The categories and methods of constitutive thought 
itself must therefore be characterized in terms of the modus 
operandi of reflective thought. Yet the latter takes place 
just because of the peculiar problem of the peculiar conditions 
under which it arises. Its work is progressive, reformatory, 
reconstructive, synthetic, in the terminology made familiar 
by Kant. We are not only not justified, accordingly, in 
transferring its determinations over to constitutive thought, 
but we are absolutely prohibited from attempting any such 
transfer. To identify logical processes, states, devices, results 
that are conditioned upon the primary fact of resistance to 
thought as constitutive with the structure of such thought is 
as complete an instance of the fallacy of recourse from one 
genus to another as could well be found. Constitutive and 
reflective thought are, first, defined in terms of their dissimi- 



Conditions and Cues of Thought-Function 47 

larity and even opposition, and then without more ado the 
forms of the description of the latter are carried over bodily 
to the former ! ! 

This is not meant for a merely controversial criticism. It 
is meant to point positively toward the fundamental thesis of 
these chapters : j All the distinctions of the thought-function, 
of conception as over against sense-perception, of judgment in 
its various modes and forms, of inference in its vast diversity 
of operation — all these distinctions come within the thought- 
situation as growing out of a characteristic antecedent typical 
formation of experience ; and have for their purpose the solu- 
tion of the peculiar problem with respect to which the 
thought-function is generated or evolved: the restoration of 
a deliberately integrated experience from the inherent con- 
flict into which it has fallen. 

^The failure of transcendental logic has the same origin as 
the failure of the empiristic (whether taken pure or in the 
mixed form in which Lotze presents it). It makes absolute 
and fixed certain distinctions of existence and meaning, and 
of one kind of meaning and another kind, which are wholly 
historic and relative in their origin and their significance. 
It views thought as attempting to represent or state reality 
once for all, instead of trying to determine some phases or 
contents of it with reference to their more effective and 
significant reciprocal employ — instead of as reconstructive.') 
[The rock against which every such logic splits is that either 
reality already has the statement which thought is endeavor- 
ing to give it, or else it has not. In the former case, thought 
is futilely reiterative; in the latter, it is falsificatory. 

The significance of Lotze for critical purposes is that his 
peculiar effort to combine a transcendental view of thought 
(i. e., of Thought as active in forms of its own, pure in and 

1 Bradley's criticisms of rationalistic idealism should have made the force of 
this point reasonably familiar. 



48 Studies in Logical Theory 

of themselves) with certain obvious facts of the dependence 
of our thought upon specific empirical antecedents, brings 
to light fundamental defects in both the empiristic and the 
transcendental logics. We discover a common failure in 
both: the failure to view logical terms and distinctions with 
respect to their necessary function in the redintegration of 
experience. 



Ill 

THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER: THE DATUM OF 

THINKING 

We have now reached a second epochal stage in the evo- 
lution of the thought-situation, a crisis which forces upon 
us the problem of the distinction and mutual reference 
of the datum or presentation, and the ideas or " thoughts." 
It will economize and perhaps clarify discussion if we start from 
the relatively positive and constructive result just reached, 
and review Lotze's treatment from that point of regard. 

We have reached the point of conflict in the matters or 
contents of an experience. It is in this conflict and because 
of it that the matters or contents, or significant quales, stand 
out as such. As long as the sun revolves about earth without 
tension or question, this " content," or fact, is not in any way 
abstracted as content or object. Its very distinction as 
content from the form or mode of experience as such is the 
result of post-reflection. The same conflict makes other 
experiences assume conscious objectification ; they, too, cease 
to be ways of living, and become distinct objects of observa- 
tion and consideration. The movements of planets, eclipses, 
etc., are cases in point. 1 The maintenance of a unified experi- 
ence has become a problem, an end. It is no longer secure. 
But this involves such restatement of the conflicting ele- 
ments as will enable them to take a place somewhere in the 
new experience ; they must be disposed of somehow, and they 
can be disposed of finally only as they are provided for. That 

iThe common statement that primitive man projects his own volitions, 
emotions, etc., into objects is but a back -handed way of expressing the truth that 
" objects," etc., have only gradually emerged from their life-matrix. Looking back, 
it is almost impossible to avoid the fallacy of supposing that somehow such 
objects were there first and were afterward emotionally appreciated. 

49 



50 Studies in Logical Theory 

is, they cannot be simply denied or excluded or eliminated; 
they must be taken into the fold of the new experience; 
such introduction, on the other hand, clearly demands more 
or less modification or transformation on their part. ^The 
thought-situation is the conscious maintenance of the unity 
of experience, with a critical consideration df the claims of 
the various conflicting contents to a place within itself, and 
a deliberate final assignment of position. / 

The conflicting situation inevitably polarizes or dichoto- 
mizes itself. There is somewhat which is untouched in the con- 
tention of incompatibles. There is something which remains 
secure, unquestioned. On the other hand, there are ele- 
ments which are rendered doubtful and precarious. This 
gives the framework of the general distribution of the field 
into "facts," the given, the presented, the Datum ; and ideas, 
the ideal, the conceived, the Thought. For there is always 
something unquestioned in any problematic situation at any 
stage of its process, 1 even if it be only the fact of conflict or 
tension. For this is never mere tension at large. It is 
thoroughly qualified, or characteristically toned and colored, 
by the particular elements which are in strife. Hence it is 
this conflict, unique and irreplaceable. That it comes now 
means precisely that it has never come before ; that it is 
now passed in review and some sort of a settlement reached, 
means that just this conflict will never recur. In a word, 
the conflict as such is immediately expressed, or felt, as of 
just this and no other sort, and this immediately appre- 
hended quality is an irreducible datum. It is fact, even if 
all else be doubtful. As it is subjected to examination, it 
loses vagueness and assumes more definite form. 

1 Of course, this very element may be the precarious, the ideal, and possibly 
fanciful of some other situation. But it is to change the historic into the absolute 
to conclude that therefore everything is uncertain, all at once, or as such. This 
gives metaphysical skepticism as distinct from the working skepticism which is an 
inherent factor in all reflection and scientific inquiry. 



The Datum of Thinking 51 

Only in very extreme cases, however, does the assured, 
unquestioned element reduce to as low terms as we have 
here imagined. . Certain things come to stand forth as facts, 
no matter what else may be doubted. There are certain 
apparent diurnal changes of the sun ; there is a certain 
annual course or track. There are certain nocturnal changes 
in the planets, and certain seasonal rhythmic paths. The 
significance of these may be doubted: Do they mean real 
change in the sun or in the earth ? But change, and change 
of a certain definite and numerically determinate character 
is there. It is clear that such out-standing facts (ex-istences) 
constitute the data, the given or presented, of the thought- 
functionT"] 

It is^obvious that this is only one correspondent, or status, 
in the total situation. With the consciousness of this as cer- 
tain, as given to be reckoned with, goes the consciousness of 
uncertainty as to what it means — of how it is to be under- 
stood or interpreted. £The facts qua presentation or exist- 
ences are sure ; qua meaning (position and relationship in an 
experience yet to be secured) they are doubtful. Yet doubt 
does not preclude memory or anticipation. Indeed, it is 
possible only through them. The memory of past experience 
makes sun-revolving-about-earth an object of attentive 
regard. The recollection of certain other experiences sug- 
gests the idea of earth-rotating-daily-on-axis and revolving- 
annually-about-sun. These contents are as much present 
as is the observation of change, but as respects worth, 
they are only possibilities. Accordingly, they are catego- 
rized or disposed of as just ideas, meanings, thoughts, ways 
of conceiving, comprehending, interpreting facts. 

Correspondence of reference here is as obvious as correla- 
tion of existence. In the logical process, the datum is not 
just real existence, and the idea mere psychical unreality. 
Both are modes of existence — one of given existence, the 



52 Studies in Logical Theory 

other of mental existence. And if the mental existence is in 
such cases regarded, from the standpoint of the unified 
experience aimed at, as having only possible value, the datum 
also is regarded, from the value standpoint, as incomplete and 
unassured. The very existence of the idea or meaning as 
separate is the partial, broken up, and hence objectively 
unreal (from the validity standpoint) character of the datum. 
Or, as we commonly put it, while the ideas are impressions, 
suggestions, guesses, theories, estimates, etc., the facts are 
crude, raw, unorganized, brute.; They lack relationship, that 
is, assured place in the universe ; they are deficient as to con- 
tinuity. Mere change of apparent position of sun, which is 
absolutely unquestioned as datum, is a sheer abstraction 
from the standpoint either of the organized experience left 
behind, or of the reorganized experience which is the end — 
the objective. It is impossible as a persistent object in expe- 
rience or reality. In other words, datum and ideatum are 
divisions of labor, co-operative instrumentalities, for eco- 
nomical dealing with the problem of the maintenance of the 
integrity of experience. 

Once more, and briefly, both datum and ideatum may 
(and positively, veritably, do) break up, each for itself, into 
physical and psychical. In so far as the conviction gains 
ground that the earth revolves about the sun, the old fact is 
broken up into a new cosmic existence, and a new psychologi- 
cal condition — the recognition of a mental process in virtue of 
which movements of smaller bodies in relation to very remote 
larger bodies are interpreted in a reverse sense. We do 
not just eliminate as false the source of error in the old con- 
tent. We reinterpret it as valid in its own place, viz., a case 
of the psychology of apperception, although invalid as a 
matter of cosmic structure. In other words, with increasing 
accuracy of determination of the given, there comes a dis- 
tinction, for methodological purposes, between the quality 



The Datum of Thinking 53 

or matter of the sense-experience and its form — the sense- 
perceiving, as itself a psychological fact, having its own place 
and laws or relations. Moreover, the old experience, that 
of sun-revolving, abides. But it is regarded as belonging to 
"me" — to this experiencing individual, rather than to the 
cosmic world. It is psychic. 

Here, then, within the growth of the thought-situation 
and as a part of the process of determining specific truth 
under specific conditions, we get for the first time the clue 
to that distinction with which, as ready-made and prior to all 
thinking, Lotze started out, namely, the separation of the 
matter of impression from impression as psychical event. 
The separation which, taken at large, engenders an insolu- 
ble problem, appears within a particular reflective inquiry, 
as an inevitable differentiation of a scheme of values. 

The same sort of thing occurs on the side of thought, or 
meaning. The meaning or idea which is growing in accept- 
ance, which is gaining ground as meaning-of -datum, gets 
logical or intellectual or objective force ; that which is losing 
standing, which is increasingly doubtful, gets qualified as 
just a notion, a fancy, a pre-judice, mis-conception — or finally 
just an error, a mental slip. 

Evaluated as fanciful in validity it becomes mere image — 
subjective; 1 and finally a psychical existence. It is not 
eliminated, but receives a new reference or meaning. Thus 
the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity is not 
one between meaning as such and datum as such. It is a 
specification that emerges, correspondently, in both datum 
and ideatum, as affairs of the direction of logical movement. 
That which is left behind in the evolution of accepted mean- 
ing is characterized as real, but only in a psychical sense; 

i But this is a slow progress within reflection. Plato, who was influential in 
bringing this general distinction to consciousness, still thought and wrote as if 
" image " were itself a queer sort of objective existence ; it was only gradually that 
it was disposed of as psychical, or a phase of immediate experience. 



54 Studies in Logical Theory 

that which is moved toward is regarded as real in an objec- 
tive, cosmic sense. 1 

The implication of the psychic and the logical within 
both the given presentation and the thought about it, appears 
in the continual shift to which logicians of Lotze's type are 
put. When the psychical is regarded as existence over 
against meaning as just ideal, reality seems to reside in the 
psychical ; it is there anyhow, and meaning is just a curious 
attachment — curious because as mere meaning it is non-exist- 
ent as event or state — and there seems to be nothing by 
which it can be even tied to the psychical state as its bearer 
or representative. But when the emphasis falls on thought 
as content, as significance, then the psychic event, the idea as 
image 2 (as distinct from idea as meaning) appears as an 
accidental but necessary evil, the unfortunate irrelevant 
medium through which our thinking has to go on. 3 

1 Of course, this means that what is excluded and so left behind in the problem 
of determination of this objective content is regarded as psychical. With reference 
to other problems and aims this same psychic existence is initial, not survival. 
Released from its prior absorption in some unanalyzed experience it gains standing 
and momentum on its own account; e. g., the "personal equation" represents what 
is eliminated from a given astronomic time-determination as being purely subjec- 
tive, or " source-of-error." But it is initiatory in reference to new modes of technique, 
re-readings of previous data — new considerations in psychology, even new socio- 
ethical judgments. Moreover, it remains a fact, and even a worthful fact, as a part 
of one's own " inner" experience, as an immediate psychical reality. That is to say, 
there is a region of personal experience (mainly emotive or aff ectional) already recog- 
nized as a sphere of value. The " source of error " is disposed of by making it a fact 
of this region. The recognition of falsity does not originate the psychic (p. 38, note). 

2 Of course, this is a further reflective distinction. The plain man and the stu- 
dent do not determine the extraneous, irrelevant, and misleading matter as image 
in a psychological sense, but only as fanciful or fantastic. Only to the psychologist 
and for his purpose does it break up into image and meaning. 

3 Bradley, more than any other writer, has seized upon this double antithesis, 
and used it first to condemn the logical as such, and then turned it around as the 
impartial condemnation of the psychical also. See Appearance and Reality. In 
chap. 15 he metes out condemnation to "thought" because it can never take in 
the psychical existence or reality which is present ; in chap. 19, he passes similar 
judgment upon the " psychical " because it is brutally fragmentary. Other epistemo- 
logical logicians have wrestled — or writhed — with this problem, but I believe Brad- 
ley's position is impregnable — from the standpoint of ready-made differences. 
When the antithesis is treated as part and lot of the process of defining the truth of 
a particular subject-matter, and thus as historic and relative, the case is quite 
otherwise. 



The Datum of Thinking 55 

1. The data of thought — When we turn to Lotze, 
we find that he makes a clear distinction between the pre- 
sented material of thought, its datum, and the typical charac- 
teristic modes of thinking in virtue of which the datum gets 
organization or system. It is interesting to note also that 
he states the datum in terms different from those in which 
the antecedents of thought are defined. From the point of 
view of the material upon which ideas exercise themselves, 
it is not coincidence, collocation, or succession that counts; 
but gradation of degrees in a scale. It is not things in 
spatial or temporal grouping that are emphasized, but qual- 
ities as mutually distingushed, yet classed — as differences 
of a common somewhat. There is no inherent inconceivabil- 
ity in the idea that every impression should be as incom- 
parably different from every other as sweet is from warm. 
But by a remarkable circumstance such is not the case. 
We have series, and networks of series. We have diversity 
of a common — diverse colors, sounds, smells, tastes, etc. In 
other words, the datum is sense-qualities which, fortunately 
for thought, are given arranged, as shades, degrees, varia- 
tions, or qualities of somewhat that is identical. 1 

All this is given, presented, to our ideational activities. 
Even the universal, the common-color which runs through 
the various qualities of blue, green, white, etc., is not a 
product of thought, but something which thought finds 
already in existence. It conditions comparison and recipro- 
cal distinction. Particularly all mathematical determina- 
tions, whether of counting (number), degree (more or less), 
and quantity (greatness and smallness), come back to this 
peculiarity of the datum of thought. Here Lotze dwells at 
considerable length upon the fact that the very possibility, as 
well as the success, of thought is due to this peculiar uni- 
versalization or prima facie ordering with which its material 

i Vol. I, pp. 28-34. 



56 Studies in Logical Theory 

is given to it. Such pre-established fitness in the meeting 
of two things that have nothing to do with each other is 
certainly cause enough for wonder and congratulation. 

It should not be difficult to see why Lotze uses different 
categories in describing the given material of thought from 
those employed in describing its antecedent conditions, 
even though, according to him, the two are absolutely the 
same. 1 He has different functions in mind. In one case, 
the material must be characterized as evoking, as incentive, 
as stimulus — from this point of view the peculiar combina- 
tion of coincidence and coherence is emphasized. But in 
the other case the material must be characterized as afford- 
ing stuff, actual subject-matter. Data are not only what is 
given to thought, but they are also the food, the raw mate- 
rial, of thought. They must be described as, on the one 
hand, wholly outside of thought. This clearly puts them 
into the region of sense-perception. They are matter of 
sensation given free from all inferring, judging, relating 
influence. Sensation is just what is not called up in mem- 
ory or in anticipated projection — it is the immediate, the 
irreducible. On the other hand, sensory -matter is quali- 

i It is interesting to see how explicitly Lotze is compelled finally to differentiate 
two aspects in the antecedents of thoughts, one of which is necessary in order that 
there may be anything to call out thought (a lack, or problem) ; the other in order 
that when thought is evoked it may find data at hand — that is, material in shape to 
receive and respond to its exercise. "The manifold matter of ideas is brought 
before us, not only in the systematic order of its qualitative relationships, but in the 
rich variety of local and temporal combinations The combinations of hetero- 
geneous ideas .... forms the problems, in connection with which the efforts of 
thought to reduce coexistence to coherence will subsequently be made. The homoge- 
neous or similar ideas, on the other hand, give occasion to separate, to connect, and 
to count their repetitions." (Vol. I, pp. 33, 34; italics mine.) Without the hetero- 
geneous variety of the local and temporal juxtapositions there would be nothing to 
excite thought. Without the systematic arrangement of quality there would be 
nothing to meet thought and reward it for its efforts. The homogeneity of qualita- 
tive relationships, in the pre-tlwught material, gives the tools or instruments by 
which thought is enabled successfully to tackle the heterogeneity of collocations 
and conjunctions also found in the same material ! One would suppose that when 
Lotze reached this point he might have been led to suspect that in this remarkable 
adjustment of thought-stimuli, thought-material, and thought-tools to one another, 
he must after all be dealing, not with something prior to the thought-function, but 
with the necessary elements in and of the thought-situation. 



The Datum of Thinking 57 

tative, and quales are made up on a common basis. They 
are degrees or grades of a common quality. Thus they 
have a certain ready-made setting of mutual distinction and 
reference which is already almost, if not quite, the effect of 
comparing, of relating, and these are the express traits of 
thinking. 

It is easy to interpret this miraculous gift of grace in 
the light of what has been said. The data are in truth 
precisely that which is selected and set aside as present, as 
immediate. Thus they are given to further thought. But 
the selection has occurred in view of the need for thought; 
it is a listing of the capital in the way of the undisturbed, 
the undiscussed, which thought can count upon in this 
particular problem. Hence it is not strange that it has a 
peculiar fitness of adaptation for thought's further work. 
Having been selected with precisely that end in view, the 
wonder would be if it were not so fitted. A man may coin 
counterfeit money for use upon others, but hardly with the 
intent of passing it off upon himself. 

Our only difficulty here is that the mind flies away from 
the logical interpretation of sense -datum to a ready-made 
notion of it brought over from abstract psychological 
inquiry. The belief in sensory quales as somehow forced 
upon us, and forced upon us at large, and thus condition- 
ing thought wholly ah extra, instead of determining it as 
instrumentalities or elements in its own scheme, is too 
fixed. Such qualities are forced upon us, but not at large. 
The sensory data of experience, as distinct from the psychol- 
ogists' constructs, always come in a context; they always 
appear as variations in a continuum of values. Even the 
thunder which breaks in upon me (to take the extreme of 
apparent discontinuity and irrelevancy) disturbs me because 
it is taken as a part of the same space-world as that in 
which my chair and room and house are located; and it is 



58 Studies in Logical Theory 

taken as an influence which interrupts and disturbs, because 
it is part of my common world of causes and effects. 
The solution of continuity is itself practical or teleological, 
and thus presupposes and affects continuity of purpose, 
occupations, and means in a life-process. It is not meta- 
physics, it is biology which enforces the idea that actual 
sensation is not only determined as an event in a world of 
events, 1 but is an occurrence occurring at a certain period in 
the evolution of experience, marking a certain point in 
its cycle, and, consequently — having always its own con- 
scious context and bearings — is a characteristic function of 
reconstruction in experience. 2 

2. Forms of thinking data. — As sensory datum is material 
set for the work of thought, so the ideational forms with 
which thought does its work are apt and prompt to meet 
the needs of the material. The "accessory" 3 notion of 
ground of coherence turns out, in truth, not to be a formal, 
or external, addition to the data, but a requalification of 
them. Thought is accessory as accomplice, not as adden- 
dum. "Thought" is to eliminate mere coincidence, and to 
assert grounded coherence. Lotze makes it absolutely clear 
that he does not at bottom conceive of "thought" as an 
activity "in itself" imposing a form of coherence; but that 
the organizing work of "thought" is only the progressive 
realization of an inherent unity, or system, in the material 
experience. The specific modes in which thought brings 
its "accessory" power to bear — names, conception, judg- 
ment, and inference — are successive stages in the adequate 
organization of the matter which comes to us first as 
datum ; they are successive stages of the effort to overcome the 

i Supra, p. 30. 

2 For the identity of sensory experience with the point of greatest strain and 
stress in conflicting or tensional experience, see " The Reflex Arc Concept in Psy- 
chology," Psychological Review, Vol. Ill, p. 57. 

3 For the " accessory " character of thought, see Lotze, Vol. I, pp. 7, 25-7, 61, etc. 



The Datum of Thinking 59 

original defects of the datum. Conception starts from the 
given universal (the common element) of sense. Yet (and 
this is the significant point) it does not simply abstract this 
common element, and consciously generalize it as over 
against its own differences. Such a "universal" is not 
coherence, just because it does not include and dominate the 
temporal and local heterogeneity. The true concept (see 
Vol. I, p. 38) is a system of attributes, held together on the 
basis of some ground, or determining, dominating principle — 
a ground which so controls all its own instances as to make 
them into an inwardly connected whole, and so specifies its 
own limits as to be exclusive of all else. If we abstract color 
as the common element of various colors, the result is not a 
scientific idea or concept. Discovery of a process of light- 
waves whose various rates constitute the various colors of the 
spectrum gives the concept. And when we get such a con- 
cept, the former mere temporal abruptness of color experi- 
ences gives way to organic parts of a color system. The 
logical product — the concept, in other words — is not a formal 
seal or stamp ; it is a thoroughgoing transformation of data 
in a given sense. 

The form or mode of thought which marks the continued 
transformation of the data and the idea in reference to each 
other is judgment. Judgment makes explicit the assump- 
tion of a principle which determines connection within an 
individualized whole. It definitely states red as this case or 
instance of the law or process of color, and thus overcomes 
further the defect in subject-matter or data still left by con- 
ception. 1 Now judgment logically terminates in disjunction. 

iBosanquet, Logic (Vol. I, pp. 30-34), and Jones (Philosophy of Lotze, 1895, chap. 
4) have called attention to a curious inconsistency in Lotze's treatment of judg- 
ment. On one hand, the statement is as given above. Judgment grows out of con- 
ception in making explicit the determining relation of universal to its own particu- 
lar, implied in conception. But, on the other hand, judgment grows not out of con- 
ception at all, but out of the question of determining connection in change. Lotze's 
nominal reason for this latter view is that the conceptual world is purely static; 



60 Studies in Logical Theory 

It gives a universal which may determine any one of a num- 
ber of alternative defined particulars, but which is arbitrary 
as to what one is selected. Systematic inference brings to 
light the material conditions under which the law, or domi- 
nating universal, applies to this, rather than that alternative 
particular, and so completes the ideal organization of the 
subject-matter. If this act were complete, we should finally 
have present to us a whole on which we should know the 
determining and effective or authorizing elements, and the 
order of development or hierarchy of dependence, in which 
others follow from them. 1 

In this account by Lotze of the operations of the forms 
of thought, there is clearly put before us the picture of a 

since the actual world is one of change, we need to pass upon what really goes 
together (is causal) in the change as distinct from such as are merely coincident. 
But, as Jones clearly shows, it is also connected with the fact that, while Lotze 
nominally asserts that judgment grows out of conception, he treats conception as 
the result of judgment since the first view makes judgment a mere explication of 
the content of an idea, and hence merely expository or analytic (in the Kantian 
sense) and so of more than doubtful applicability to reality. The affair is too 
large to discuss here, and I will content myself with referring to the oscillation be- 
tween conflicting contents, and gradation of sensory qualities already discussed (p. 
56, note). It is judgment which grows out of the former, because judgment is the 
whole situation as such; conception is referable to the latter because it is one 
abstraction within the whole (the solution of possible meanings of the data) just 
as the datum is another. In truth, since the sensory datum is not absolute, but 
comes in a historical context, the qualities apprehended as constituting the datum 
simply define the locus of conflict in the entire situation. They are attributives of 
the contents-in-tension of the colliding things, not calm untroubled ultimates. On 
pp. 33 and 34 of Vol. I, Lotze recognizes (as we have just seen) that, as matter of 
fact, it is both sensory qualities in their systematic grading, or quantitative de- 
terminations (see Vol. I, p. 43, for the recognition of the necessary place of the 
quantitative in the true concept), and the "rich variety of local and temporal 
combinations," that provoke thought and supply it with material. But, as usual, 
he treats this simply as a historical accident, not as furnishing the key to the 
whole matter. In fine, while the heterogeneous collocations and successions con- 
stitute the problematic element that stimulates thought,quantitative determination 
of the sensory quality furnishes one of the two chief means through which thought 
deals with the problem. It is a reduction of the original colliding contents to a form 
in which the effort at redintegration gets maximum efficiency. The concept, as ideal 
meaning, is of course the other partner to the transaction. It is getting the various 
possible meanings-of-the-data into such shape as to make them most useful in con- 
struing the data. The bearing of this upon the subject and predicate of judgment 
cannot be discussed here. 

i See Vol. I, pp. 38, 59, 61, 105, 129, 197, for Lotze's treatment of these distinctions. 



The Datum of Thinking 61 

continuous correlative determination of datum on one side 
and of idea or meaning on the other, till experience is again 
integral, data thoroughly defined and corrected, and ideas 
completely incarnate as the relevant meaning of subject-mat- 
ter. That we have here in outline a description of what 
actually occurs there can be no doubt. But there is as little 
doubt that it is thoroughly inconsistent with Lotze's supposi- 
tion that the material or data of thought is precisely the same 
as the antecedents of thought ; or that ideas, conceptions, are 
purely mental somewhats brought to bear, as the sole essen- 
tial characteristics of thought, extraneously upon a material 
provided ready-made. It means but one thing: The main- 
tenance of unity and wholeness in experience through con- 
flicting contents occurs by means of a strictly correspondent 
setting apart of fact to be accurately described and properly 
related, and meaning to be adequately construed and prop- 
erly referred. The datum is given in the thought-situation, 
and to further qualification of ideas or meanings. But even 
in this aspect it presents a problem. To find out what is 
given is an inquiry which taxes reflection to the uttermost. 
Every important advance in scientific method means better 
agencies, more skilled technique for simply detaching and 
describing what is barely there, or given. To be able to find 
out what can safely be taken as there, as given in any par- 
ticular inquiry, and hence be taken as material for orderly and 
verifiable thinking, for fruitful hypothesis-making, for enter- 
taining of explanatory and interpretative ideas, is one phase 
of the effort of systematic scientific inquiry. It marks its 
inductive phase. To take what is given in the thought- 
situation, for the sake of accomplishing the aim of thought 
(along with a correlative discrimination of ideas or meanings), 
as if it were given absolutely, or apart from a particular his- 
toric situs and context, is the fallacy of empiricism as a 
logical theory. To regard the thought-forms of conception, 



62 Studies in Logical Theory 

judgment, and inference as qualifications of " pure thought, 
apart from any difference in objects," instead of as successive 
dispositions in the progressive organization of the material 
(or objects) is the fallacy of rationalism. Lotze attempts to 
combine the two, thinking thereby to correct each by the 
other. 

Lotze recognizes the futility of thought if the sense- 
data are final, if they alone are real, the truly existent, 
self -justificatory and valid. He sees that, if the empiricist 
were right in his assumption as to the real worth of the 
given data, thinking would be a ridiculous pretender, 
either toilfully and poorly doing over again what needs no 
doing, or making a wilful departure from truth. He realizes 
that thought really is evoked because it is needed, and that 
it has a work to do which is not merely formal, but which 
effects a modification of the subject-matter of experience. 
Consequently he assumes a thought-in-itself, with certain 
forms and modes of action of its own, a realm of mean- 
ing possessed of a directive and normative worth of its 
own — the root-fallacy of rationalism. His attempted com- 
promise between the two turns out to be based on the 
assumption of the indefensible ideas of both — the notion 
of an independent matter of thought, on one side, and of 
an independent worth or value of thought-forms, on the other. 

This pointing out of inconsistencies becomes stale and 
unprofitable save as we bring them back into connection 
with their root-origin — the erection of distinctions that are 
genetic and historic, and working or instrumental divisions of 
labor, into rigid and ready-made differences of structural real- 
ity. Lotze clearly recognizes that thought's nature is depend- 
ent upon its aim, its aim upon its problem, and this upon the 
situation in which it finds its incentive and excuse. Its 
work is cut out for it. It does not what it would, but what 
it must. As Lotze puts it, "Logic has to do with thought, 



The Datum of Thinking 63 



not as it would be under hypothetical conditions, but as it is " 
(Vol. I, p. 33), and this statement is made in explicit combina- 
tion with statements to the effect that the peculiarity of the 
material of thought conditions its activity. Similarly he says, 
in a passage already referred to: "The possibility and the 
success of thought's production in general depends upon this 
original constitution and organization of the whole world of 
ideas, a constitution which, though not necessary in thought, 
is all the more necessary to make thought possible." 1 

As we have seen, the essential nature of conception, judg- 
ment, and inference is dependent upon peculiarities of the 
propounded material, they being forms dependent for their 
significance upon the stage of organization in which they 
begin. 

From this only one conclusion is suggested. If thought's 
nature is dependent upon its actual conditions and circum- 
stances, the primary logical problem is to study thought-in- 
its-conditioning; it is to detect the crisis within which 
thought and its subject-matter present themselves in their 
mutual distinction and cross-reference. But Lotze is so 
thoroughly committed to a ready-made antecedent of some 
sort, that this genetic consideration is of no account to him. 
The historic method is a mere matter of psychology, and has 
no logical worth (Vol. I, p. 2). We must presuppose a 
psychological mechanism and psychological material, but 
logic is concerned not with origin or history, but with 
authority, worth, value (Vol. I, p. 10). Again : "Logic is 
not concerned with the manner in which the elements util- 
ized by thought come into existence, but their value 
after they have somehow come into existence, for the carry- 
ing out of intellectual operations" (Vol. I, p. 34). And 
finally : "I have maintained throughout my work that 
logic cannot derive any serious advantage from a discussion 

i Vol. I, p. 36 ; see also Vol. II, pp. 290, 291. 



64 Studies in Logical Theoey 

of the conditions under which thought as a psychological 
process comes about. The significance of logical forms. . . . 
is to be found in the utterances of thought, the laws which 
it imposes, after or during the act of thinking, not in the 
conditions which lie back of and which produce thought." 1 
Lotze, in truth, represents a halting-stage in the evolu- 
tion of logical theory. He is too far along to be contented 
with the reiteration of the purely formal distinctions of 
a merely formal thought-by-itself. He recognizes that 
thought as formal is the form of some matter, and has its 
worth only as organizing that matter to meet the ideal 
demands of reason; and that "reason" is in truth only an 
ideal systematization of the matter or content. Consequently 
he has to open the door to admit "psychical processes" 
which furnish this material. Having let in the material, he 
is bound to shut the door again in the face of the processes 
from which the material proceeded — to dismiss them as 
impertinent intruders. If thought gets its data in such a 
surreptitious manner, there is no occasion for wonder that 
the legitimacy of its dealings with the material remains an 
open question. Logical theory, like every branch of the 
philosophic disciplines, waits upon a surrender of the obsti- 
nate conviction that, while the work and aim of thought is 
conditioned by the material supplied to it, yet the worth of 
its performances is something to be passed upon in complete 
abstraction from conditions of origin and development. 

i Vol. II, p. 246 ; the same is reiterated in Vol. II, p. 250, where the question of 
origin is referred to as a corruption in logic. Certain psychical acts are necessary as 
" conditions and occasions" of logical operations, but the "deep gulf between psy- 
chical mechanism and thought remains unfilled. " 



IV 

THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER : THE CONTENT AND 
OBJECT OF THOUGHT 

In the foregoing discussion, particularly in the last chap- 
ter, we were led repeatedly to recognize that thought has its 
own content. At times Lotze gives way to the tendency to 
define thought entirely in terms of modes and forms of 
activity which are exercised by it upon a strictly foreign 
material. But two motives continually push him in the other 
direction. (1) Thought has a distinctive work to do, one 
which involves a qualitative transformation of (at least) the 
relationships of the presented matter; as fast as it accom- 
plishes this work, the subject-matter becomes somehow 
thought's own. As we have just seen, the data are pro- 
gressively organized to meet thought's ideal of a complete 
whole, with its members interconnected according to a 
determining principle. Such progressive organization 
throws backward doubt upon the assumption of the origi- 
nal total irrelevancy of the data and thought-form to each 
other. (2) A like motive operates from the side of the 
subject-matter. As merely foreign and external, it is too 
heterogeneous to lend itself to thought's exercise and 
influence. The idea, as we saw in the first chapter, is the 
convenient medium through which Lotze passes from the 
purely heterogeneous psychical impression or event, which 
is totally irrelevant to thought's purpose and working, over 
to a state of affairs which can reward thought. Idea as 
meaning forms the bridge from the brute factuality of the 
psychical impression over to the coherent value of thought's 
own content. 

65 



66 Studies in Logical Theory 

We have, in this chapter, to consider the question of the 
idea or content of thought from two points of view : first, 
the possibility of such a content — its consistency with 
Lotze's fundamental premises; secondly, its objective charac- 
ter — its validity and test. 

I. The question of the possibility of a specific content 
of thought is the question of the nature of the idea as 
meaning. Meaning is the characteristic content of thought 
as such. We have thus far left unquestioned Lotze's con- 
tinual assumption of meaning as a sort of thought-unit ; the 
building-stone of thought's construction. In his treat- 
ment of meaning, Lotze's contradictions regarding the 
antecedents, data, and content of thought reach their full 
conclusion. He expressly makes meaning to be the product 
of thought's activity and also the unreflective material out 
of which thought's operations grow. 

This contradiction has been worked out in accurate and 
complete detail by Professor Jones. 1 He summarizes it as 
follows (p. 99): "No other way was left to him [Lotze] 
excepting this of first attributing all to sense and afterwards 
attributing all to thought, and, finally of attributing it to 
thought only because it was already in its material. This 
seesaw is essential to his theory ; the elements of knowl- 
edge as he describes them can subsist only by the alternate 
robbery of each other." We have already seen how strenu- 
ously Lotze insists upon the fact that the given subject-matter 
of thought is to be regarded wholly as the work of a physical 
mechanism, "without any action of thought." 2 But Lotze also 
states that if the products of the psychical mechanism " are 
to admit of combination in the definite form of a thought, 
they each require some previous shaping to make them into 

i Philosophy of Lotze, chap. 3, "Thought and the Preliminary Process of Expe- 
rience." 

2 Vol. I, p. 38. 



The Content and Object of Thought 67 

logical building-stones and to convert them from impressions 
into ideas. Nothing is really more familiar to us than this first 
operation of thought; the only reason why we usually over- 
look it is that in the language which we inherit, it is already 
carried out, and it seems, therefore, to belong to the self- 
evident presuppositions of thought, not to its own specific 
work." 1 And again (Vol. I, p. 23) judgments "can consist 
of nothing but combinations of ideas which are no longer 
mere impressions: every such idea must have undergone at 
least the simple formation mentioned above." Such ideas 
are, Lotze goes on to urge, already rudimentary concepts — 
that is to say, logical determinations. 

The obviousness of the logical contradiction of attribut- 
ing to a preliminary specific work of thought exactly the 
condition of affairs which is elsewhere explicitly attributed 
to a psychical mechanism prior to any thought-activity, 
should not blind us to its meaning and relative necessity. 
The impression, it will be recalled, is a mere state of our 
own consciousness — a mood of ourselves. As such it has 
simply de facto relations as an event to other similar events. 
But reflective thought is concerned with the relationship of 
a content or matter to other contents. Hence the impres- 
sion must have a matter before it can come at all within 
the sphere of thought's exercise. How shall it secure 
this ? Why, by a preliminary activity of thought which 
objectifies the impression. Blue as a mere sensuous irrita- 
tion or feeling is given a quality, the meaning "blue" 
— blueness; the sense-impression is objectified; it is pre- 
sented " no longer as a condition which we undergo, but 
as a something which has its being and its meaning in itself, 
and which continues to be what it is, and to mean what it 
means whether we are conscious of it or not. It is easy to 
see here the necessary beginning of that activity which we 

i Vol. I, p. 13; last italics mine. 



68 Studies in Logical Theory 

above appropriated to thought as such : it has not yet got 
so far as converting coexistence into coherence. It has first 
to perform the previous task of investing each single impres- 
sion with an independent validity, without which the later 
opposition of their real coherence to mere coexistence could 
not be made in any intelligible sense." 1 

This objectification, which converts a sensitive state into 
a sensible matter to which the sensitive state is referred, 
also gives this matter "position," a certain typical character. 
It is not objectified in a merely general way, but is given a 
specific sort of objectivity. Of these kinds of objectivity 
there are three mentioned: that of a substantive content; 
that of an attached dependent content; that of an active 
relationship connecting the various contents with each other. 
In short, we have the types of meaning embodied in language 
in the form of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. It is through this 
preliminary formative activity of thought that reflective or 
logical thought has presented to it a world of meanings 
ranged in an order of relative independence and dependence, 
and ranged as elements in a complex of meanings whose 
various constituent parts mutually influence each other's 
meanings. 2 

As usual, Lotze mediates the contradiction between 
material constituted by thought and the same material just 
presented to thought, by a further position so disparate to 
each that, taken in connection with each in a pair, and by 
turns, it seems to bridge the gulf. After describing the 
prior constitutive work of thought as above, he goes on to 
discuss a second phase of thought which is intermediary 
between this and the third phase, viz., reflective thought 
proper. This second activity is that of arranging experi- 

1 Vol. I, p. 14 ; italics mine. 

2 See Vol. I, pp. 16-20. On p. 22 this work is declared to be not only the first, 
but the most indispensable of all thought's operations. 



The Content and Object op Thought 69 

enced quales in series and groups, thus ascribing a sort of 
universal or common somewhat to various instances (as 
already described ; see p. 55). On one hand, it is clearly 
stated that this second phase of thought's activity is in real- 
ity the same as the first phase : since all objectification 
involves positing, since positing involves distinction of one 
matter from others, and since this involves placing it in a 
series or group in which each is measurably marked off, as to 
the degree and nature of its diversity, from every other. We 
are told that we are only considering " a really inseparable 
operation " of thought from two different sides : first, as to 
the effect which objectifying thought has upon the matter 
as set over against the feeling subject,, secondly, the effect 
which this objectification has upon the matter in relation 
to other matters. 1 Afterward, however, these two opera- 
tions are declared to be radically different in type and nature. 
The first is determinant and formative ; it gives ideas " the 
shape without which the logical spirit could not accept them." 
In a way it dictates "its own laws to its object-matter." 2 
The second activity of thought is rather passive and recep- 
tive. It simply recognizes what is already there. "Thought 
can make no difference where it finds none already in the 
matter of impressions." 3 " The first universal, as we saw, 
can only be experienced in immediate sensation. It is 
no product of thought, but something that thought finds 
already in existence." * 

i Vol. I, p. 26. 2 Vol. I, p. 35. 

3 Vol. I, p. 36 ; see the strong statements already quoted, p. 30. What if this 
canon were applied in the first act of thought referred to above : the original 
objectification which transforms the mere state into an abiding quality or meaning? 
Suppose, that is, it were said that the first objectifying act cannot make a substan- 
tial (or attached) quale out of a mere state of feeling; it must find the distinction it 
makes there already ! It is clear we should at once get a regressus ad infinitum. We 
here find Lotze face to face with this fundamental dilemma : thought either arbi- 
trarily forces in its own distinctions, or else just repeats what is already there — is 
either falsifying or futile. This same contradiction, so far as it affects the impres- 
sion, has already been discussed. See p. 31. 

*Vol.I,p.31. 



70 Studies in Logical Theoky 

The obviousness of this further contradiction is paralleled 
only by its inevitableness. Thought is in the air, is arbi- 
trary and wild in dealing with meanings, unless it gets its 
start and cue from actual experience. Hence the necessity 
of insisting upon thought's activity as just recognizing the 
contents already given. But, on the other hand, prior to the 
work of thought there is to Lotze no content or meaning. It 
requires a work of thought to detach anything from the flux of 
sense-irritations and invest it with a meaning of its own. This 
dilemma is inevitable to any writer who declines to consider 
as correlative the nature of thought-activity and thought- 
content from the standpoint of their generating conditions in 
the movement of experience. Viewed from such a standpoint 
the principle of solution is clear enough. As we have already 
seen (p. 53), the internal dissension of an experience leads 
to detaching certain values previously absorptively inte- 
grated into the concrete experience as part of its own quali- 
tative coloring; and to relegating them, for the time being, 
(pending integration into further immediate values of a recon- 
stituted experience) into a world of bare meanings, a sphere 
qualified as ideal throughout. These meanings then become 
the tools of thought in interpreting the data, just as the sense- 
qualities which define the presented situation are the imme- 
diate object to thought. The two as mutually referred are 
content. That is, the datum and the thought-mode or idea 
as connected are the object of thought. 

To reach this unification is thought's objective or goal. 
Exactly the same value is idea, as either tool or content, ac- 
cording as it is taken as instrumental or as accomplishment. 
Every successive cross-section of the thought-situation pre- 
sents what may be taken for granted as the outcome of 
previous thinking, and consequently as the determinant of 
further reflective procedure. Taken as defining the point 
reached in the thought-function and serving as constituent 



The Content and Object of Thought 71 

unit of further thought, it is content. Lotze' s instinct is sure 
in identifying and setting over against each other the material 
given to thought and the content which is thought's own 
"building-stone." His contradictions arise simply from the 
fact that his absolute, non-historic method does not permit 
him to interpret this joint identity and distinction in a work- 
ing, and hence relative, sense. 

II. The question of how the possibility of meanings, or 
thought-contents, is to be understood merges imperceptibly 
into the question of the real objectivity or validity of such 
contents. The difficulty for Lotze is the now familiar one : 
So far as his logic compels him to insist that these meanings 
are the possession and product of thought (since thought is 
an independent activity), the ideas are merely ideas ; there is 
no test of objectivity beyond the thoroughly unsatisfactory 
and formal one of their own mutual consistency. In reaction 
from this Lotze is thrown back upon the idea of these con- 
tents as the original matter given in the impressions them- 
selves. Here there seems to be an objective or external test 
by which the reality of thought's operations may be tried ; a 
given idea is verified or found false according to its measure 
of correspondence with the matter of experience as such. 
But now we are no better off. The original independence 
and heterogeneity of impressions and of thought is so great 
that there is no way to compare the results of the latter with 
the former. We cannot compare or contrast distinctions of 
worth with bare differences of factual existence (Vol. I, p. 2). 
The standard or test of objectivity is so thoroughly external 
that by original definition it is wholly outside the realm of 
thought. How can thought compare its own contents with 
that which is wholly outside itself ? 

Or again, the given material of experience apart from 
thought is precisely the relatively chaotic and unorganized; 
it even reduces itself to a mere sequence of psychical events. 



72 Studies in Logical Theory 

What rational meaning is there in directing us to compare 
the highest results of scientific inquiry with the bare se- 
quence of our own states of feeling ; or even with the origi- 
nal data whose fragmentary and uncertain character was the 
exact motive for entering upon scientific inquiry ? How can 
the former in any sense give a check or test of the value of 
the latter ? This is professedly to test the validity of a sys- 
tem of meanings by comparison with that whose defects and 
errors call forth the construction of the system of meanings 
by which to rectify and replace themselves. Our subsequent 
inquiry simply consists in tracing some of the phases of the 
characteristic seesaw from one to the other of the two horns 
of the now familiar dilemma: either thought is separate 
from the matter of experience, and then its validity is wholly 
its own private business; or else the objective results of 
thought are already in the antecedent material, and then 
thought is either unnecessary, or else has no way of check- 
ing its own performances. 

1. Lotze assumes, as we have seen, a certain independent 
validity in each meaning or qualified content, taken in and of 
itself. "Blue" has a certain validity, or meaning, in and of 
itself; it is an object for consciousness as such. After the 
original sense-irritation through which it was mediated has 
entirely disappeared, it persists as a valid idea, as a mean- 
ing. Moreover, it is an object or content of thought for 
others as well. Thus it has a double mark of validity: in 
the comparison of one part of my own experience with 
another, and in the comparison of my experience as a whole 
with that of others. Here we have a sort of validity which 
does not raise at all the question of metaphysical reality 
(Vol. I, pp. 14, 15). Lotze thus seems to have escaped 
from the necessity of employing as check or test for the 
validity of ideas any reference to a real outside the sphere 
of thought itself. Such terms as "conjunction," "fran- 



The Content and Object of Thought 73 

chise," "constitution," "algebraic zero," etc., etc., claim to 
possess objective validity. Yet none of these professes 
to refer to a reality beyond thought. Generalizing this 
point of view, validity or objectivity of meaning means 
simply that which is "identical for all consciousness" (Vol. 
I, p. 3); "it is quite indifferent whether certain parts of the 
world of thought indicate something which has beside an 
independent reality outside of thinking minds, or whether 
all that it contains exists only in the thoughts of those who 
think it, but with equal validity for them all" (Vol. I, p. 16). 

So far it seems clear sailing. Difficulties, however, show 
themselves, the moment we inquire what is meant by a 
self -identical content for all thought. Is this to be taken in 
a static or in a dynamic way? That is to say: Does it 
express the fact that a given content or meaning is de facto 
presented to the consciousness of all alike? Does this 
coequal presence guarantee an objectivity ? Or does validity 
attach to a given meaning or content in so far as it directs 
and controls the further exercise of thinking, and thus the 
formation of further new contents of consciousness? 

The former interpretation is alone consistent with Lotze's 
notion that the independent idea as such is invested with a 
certain validity or objectivity. It alone is consistent with 
his assertion that concepts precede judgments. It alone, that 
is to say, is consistent with the notion that reflective think- 
ing has a sphere of ideas or meanings supplied to it at the 
outset. But it is impossible to entertain this belief. The 
stimulus which, according to Lotze, goads thought on from 
ideas or concepts to judgments and inferences, is in truth 
simply the lack of validity, of objectivity in its original inde- 
pendent meanings or contents. A meaning as independ- 
ent is precisely that which is not invested with validity, but 
which is a mere idea, a " notion," a fancy, at best a 
surmise which may turn out to be valid (and of course 



74 Studies in Logical Theory 

this indicates possible reference) ; a standpoint to have its 
value determined by its further active use. "Blue" as a 
mere detached floating meaning, an idea at large, would 
not gain in validity simply by being entertained continu- 
ously in a given consciousness; or by being made at one 
and the same time the persistent object of attentive regard 
by all human consciousnesses. If this were all that were 
required, the chimera, the centaur, or any other subjective 
construction, could easily gain validity. " Christian Science" 
has made just this notion the basis of its philosophy. 

The simple fact is that in such illustrations as "blue," 
"franchise," "conjunction," Lotze instinctively takes cases 
which are not mere independent and detached meanings, 
but which involve reference to a region of cosmic experi- 
ence, or to a region of mutually determining social activities. 
The conception that reference to a social activity does not 
involve the same sort of reference of thought beyond itself 
that is involved in physical matters, and hence may be taken 
quite innocent and free of the metaphysical problem of 
reference to reality beyond meaning, is one of the strangest 
that has ever found lodgment in human thinking. Either 
both physical and social reference or neither, is metaphysi- 
cal ; if neither, then it is because the meaning functions, as 
it originates, in a specific situation which carries with it 
its own tests (see p. 17). Lotze's conception is made possible 
only by unconsciously substituting the idea of object as con- 
tent of thought for a large number of persons (or a de facto 
somewhat for every consciousness), for the genuine defini- 
tion of object as a determinant in a scheme of experience. 
The former is consistent with Lotze's conception of thought, 
but wholly indeterminate as to validity or intent. The 
latter is the test used experimentally in all concrete thinking, 
but involves a radical transformation of all Lotze's assump- 
tions. A given idea of the conjunction of the franchise, or 



The Content and Object of Thought 75 

of blue, is valid, not because everybody happens to entertain 
it, but because it expresses the factor of control or direction 
in a given movement of experience. The test of validity 
of idea 1 is its functional or instrumental use in effecting 
the transition from a relatively conflicting experience to a 
relatively integrated one. If Lotze's view were correct, 
"blue" valid once would be valid always — even when red 
or green were actually called for to fulfil specific conditions. 
This is to say validity always refers to rightfulness or 
adequacy of performance in an asserting of connection — not 
to the meaning as detached and contemplated. 

If we refer again to the fact that the genuine antecedent 
of thought is a situation which is tensional as regards its 
existing status, or disorganized in its structural elements, 
yet organized as emerging out of the unified experience 
of the past and as striving as a whole, or equally in all its 
phases, to reinstate an experience harmonized in make-up, we 
can easily understand how certain contents may be detached 
and held apart as meanings or references, actual or possible 
(according as they are viewed with reference to the past 
or to the future). We can understand how such detached 
contents may be of use in effecting a review of the entire 
experience, and as affording standpoints and methods of a 
reconstruction which will maintain the integrity of expe- 
rience. We can understand how validity of meaning is 
measured by reference to something which is not mere 
meaning; by reference to something which lies beyond the 
idea as such — viz., the reconstitution of an experience into 
which thought enters as mediator. That paradox of ordinary 
experience and of scientific inquiry by which objectivity is 
given alike to matter of perception and to conceived relations 

i As we have already seen, the concept, the meaning as such, is always a factor 
or status in a reflective situation; it is always a predicate of judgment, in use in 
interpreting and developing the logical subject, or datum of perception. See 
Study VII, on the Hypothesis. 



76 Studies in Logical Theory 

— to facts and to laws— affords no peculiar difficulty, because 
we see that the test of objectivity is everywhere the same: 
anything is objective in so far as, through the medium 
of conflict, it controls the movement of experience in its 
reconstructive transition from one unified form to another. 
There is not first an object, whether of sense-perception or 
of conception, which afterward somehow exercises this con- 
trolling influence; but the objective is such in virtue of the 
exercise of function of control. It may only control the act 
of inquiry ; it may only set on foot doubt, but this is direc- 
tion of subsequent experience, and, in so far, is a token of 
objectivity. 

So much for the thought-content or meaning as having 
a validity of its own. It does not have it as isolated or 
given or static ; it has it in its dynamic reference, its use in 
determining further movement of experience. In other 
words, the "meaning" or idea as such, having been selected 
and made-up with reference to performing a certain office in 
the evolution of a unified experience, can be tested in no 
other way than by discovering whether it does what it was 
intended to do and what it purports to do. 1 

2. Lotze has to wrestle with this question of validity in a 
further aspect: What constitutes the objectivity of thinking 
as a total attitude, activity, or function? According to his 
own statement, the meanings or valid ideas are after all only 
building-stones for logical thought. Validity is thus not a 
question of them in their independent existences, but of their 
mutual reference to each other. Thinking is the process of 

i Royce, in. his World and Individual, Vol. I, chaps. 6 and 7, has criticised the 
conception of meaning as valid, but in a way which implies that there is a difference 
between validity and reality, in the sense that the meaning or content of the valid 
idea becomes real only when it is experienced in direct feeling. The above implies, 
of course, a difference between validity and reality, but finds the test of validity in 
exercise of the function of direction or control to which the idea makes pretension 
or claim. The same point of view would profoundly modify Royce's interpretation 
of what he terms "inner" and "outer" meaning. See Moore, The University of 
Chicago Decennial Publications, Vol. Ill, on "Existence, Meaning, and Reality." 



The Content and Object of Thought 77 

instituting these mutual references; of building up the 
various scattered and independent building-stones into the 
coherent system of thought. What is the validity of the 
various forms of thinking which find expression in the 
various types of judgment and in the various forms of infer- 
ence ? Categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive judgment ; infer- 
ence by induction, by analogy, by mathematical equation; 
classification, theory of explanation — all these are processes 
of reflection by which mutual connection in an individualized 
whole is given to the fragmentary meanings or ideas with 
which thought as it sets out is supplied. What shall we say 
of the validity of such processes ? 

On one point Lotze is quite clear. These various logical 
acts do not really enter into the constitution of the valid 
world. The logical forms as such are maintained only in 
the process of thinking. The world of valid truth does not 
undergo a series of contortions and evolutions, paralleling in 
any way the successive steps and missteps, the succession of 
tentative trials, withdrawals, and retracings, which mark the 
course of our own thinking. 1 

Lotze is explicit upon the point that it is only the thought- 
content in which the process of thinking issues that has ob- 
jective validity ; the act of thinking is " purely and simply an 
inner movement of our own minds, made necessary to us by 
reason of the constitution of our nature and of our place 
in the world" (Vol. II, p. 279). 

Here the problem of validity presents itself as the prob- 
lem of the relation of the act of thinking to its own product. 

1 Vol. II, pp. 257, 265 and in general Book III, chap. 4. It is significant that 
thought itself, appearing as an act of thinking over against its own content, is here 
treated as psychical. Even this explicit placing of thinking in the psychical sphere, 
along with sensations and the associative mechanism, does not, however, lead Lotze 
to reconsider his statement that the psychological problem is totally irrelevant and 
even corrupting as regards the logical. Consequently, as we see in the text, it only 
gives him one more difficulty to wrestle with : how a process which is ex officio purely 
psychical and subjective can yet yield results which are valid, in a logical, to say 
nothing of an ontological, sense. 



78 Studies in Logical Theory 

"K In his solution Lotze uses two metaphors: one derived from 
building operations, the other from traveling. The con- 
struction of a building requires of necessity certain tools and 
extraneous constructions, stagings, scaffoldings, etc., which 
are necessary to effect the final construction, but yet which 
do not enter into the building as such. The activity has an 
instrumental, though not a constitutive, value as regards its 
product. Similarly, in order to get a view from the top of 
a mountain — this view being the objective — the traveler 
has to go through preliminary movements along devious 
courses. These again are antecedent prerequisites, but do 
not constitute a portion of the attained view. 

The problem of thought as activity, as distinct from 
thought as content, opens up altogether too large a question 
to receive complete consideration at this point. Fortunately, 
however, the previous discussion enables us to narrow the 
point which is in issue just here. It is once more the ques- 
tion whether the activity of thought is to be regarded as an 
independent function supervening entirely from without 
upon antecedents, and directed from without upon data; or 
whether it marks merely a phase of the transformation which 
-. the course of experience (whether practical, or artistic, or 
socially affectional or whatever) undergoes in entering into 
a tensional status where the maintenance of its harmony 
of content is problematic and hence an aim. If it be 
the latter, a thoroughly intelligent sense can be given to 
the proposition that the activity of thinking is instrumental, 
and that its worth is found, not in its own successive states 
as such, but in the result in which it comes to conclusion. 
But the conception of thinking as an independent activity 
somehow occurring after an independent antecedent, playing 
upon an independent subject-matter, and finally effecting 
an independent result, presents us with just one miracle the 
more. 



The Content and Object of Thought 79 

I do not question the strictly instrumental character of 
thinking. The problem lies not here, but in the interpre- 
tation of the nature of the organ and instrument. The diffi- 
culty with Lotze's position is that it forces us info the 
assumption of a means and an end which are simply and 
only external to each other, and yet necessarily dependent 
upon each other — a position which, whenever found, is so 
thoroughly self -contradictory as to necessitate critical recon- 
sideration of the premises which lead to it. Lotze vibrates 
between the notion of thought as a tool in the external sense, 
a mere scaffolding to a finished building in which it has no 
part nor lot, and the notion of thought as an immanent tool, 
as a scaffolding which is an integral part of the very opera- 
tion of building, and set up for the sake of the building- 
activity which is carried on effectively only with and through 
a scaffolding. Only in the former case can the scaffolding be 
considered as a mere tool. In the latter case the external 
scaffolding is not itself the instrumentality; the actual tool 
is the action of erecting the building, and this action involves 
the scaffolding as a constituent part of itself. The work of 
erecting is not set over against the completed building as 
mere means to an end; it is the end taken in process or 
historically, longitudinally viewed. The scaffolding, more- 
over, is not an external means to the process of erecting, 
but an organic member of it. It is no mere accident of 
language that "building" has a double sense — meaning at 
once the process and the finished product. The outcome of 
thought is the thinking activity carried on to its own com- 
pletion; the activity, on the other hand, is the outcome 
taken anywhere short of its own realization, and thereby still 
going on. 

The only consideration which prevents easy and imme- 
diate acceptance of this view is the notion of thinking as 
something purely formal. It is strange that the empiricist 



80 Studies in Logical Theoey 

does not see that his insistence upon a matter extrane- 
ously given to thought only strengthens the hands of the 
rationalist with his claim of thinking as an independent 
activity, separate from the actual make-up of the affairs 
of experience. Thinking as a merely formal activity exer- 
cised upon certain sensations or images or objects sets forth 
an absolutely meaningless proposition. The psychological 
identification of thinking with the process of association is 
much nearer the truth. It is, indeed, on the way to the 
truth. We need only to recognize that association is of con- 
tents or matters or meanings, not of ideas as bare exist- 
ences or events; and that the type of association we call 
thinking differs from the associations of casual fancy and 
revery in an element of control by reference to an end 
which determines the fitness and thus the selection of the 
associates, to apprehend how completely thinking is a recon- 
structive movement of actual contents of experience in rela- 
tion to each other, and for the sake of a redintegration of a 
conflicting experience. 

There is no miracle in the fact that tool and material are 
adapted to each other in the process of reaching a valid con- 
clusion. Were they external in origin to each other and 
to the result, the whole affair would, indeed, present an 
insoluble problem — so insoluble that, if this were the true 
condition of affairs, we never should even know that there 
was a problem. But, in truth, both material and tool have 
been secured and determined with reference to economy and 
efficiency in effecting the end desired — the maintenance of 
a harmonious experience. The builder has discovered that 
his building means building tools, and also building mate- 
rial. Each has been slowly evolved with reference to its fit 
employ in the entire function; and this evolution has been 
checked at every point by reference to its own correspondent. 
The carpenter has not thought at large on his building and 



The Content and Object of Thought 81 

then constructed tools at large, but has thought of his build- 
ing in terms of the material which enters into it, and through 
that medium has come to the consideration of the tools 
which are helpful. Life proposes to maintain at all hazards 
the unity of its own process. Experience insists on being 
itself, on securing integrity even through and by means of 
conflict. 

This is not a formal question, but one of the placing and 
relations of the matters or values actually entering into ex- 
perience. And this in turn determines the taking up of just 
those mental attitudes, and the employing of just those 
intellectual operations, which most effectively handle and 
organize the material. Thinking is adaptation to an end 
through the adjustment of particular objective contents. 

The thinker, like the carpenter, is at once stimulated and 
checked in every stage of his procedure by the particular 
situation which confronts him. A person is at the stage of 
wanting a new house: well then, his materials are available 
resources, the price of labor, the cost of building, the state 
and needs of his family, profession, etc. ; his tools are paper 
and pencil and compass, or possibly the bank as a credit 
instrumentality, etc. Again, the work is beginning. The 
foundations are laid. This in turn determines its own spe- 
cific materials and tools. Again, the building is almost 
ready for occupancy. The concrete process is that of taking 
away the scaffolding, clearing up the grounds, furnishing 
and decorating rooms, etc. This specific operation again 
determines its own fit or relevant materials and tools. It 
defines the time and mode and manner of beginning and 

1 Professor James's satisfaction in the contemplation of bare pluralism, of dis- 
connection, of radical having-nothing-to-do-with-one-another, is a case in point. 
The satisfaction points to an aesthetic attitude in which the brute diversity becomes 
itself one interesting object; and thus unity asserts itself in its own denial. When 
discords are hard and stubborn, and intellectual and practical unification are far to 
seek, nothing is commoner than the device of securing the needed unity by recourse 
to an emotion which feeds on the very brute variety. Keligion and art and romantic 
affection are full of examples. 



82 Studies in Logical Theoey 

ceasing to use them. Logical theory will get along as well 
as does reflective practice, when it sticks close by and 
observes the directions and checks inherent in each successive 
phase of the evolution of the cycle of experiencing. The 
problem in general of validity of the thinking process as dis- 
tinct from the validity of this or that process arises only 
when thinking is isolated from its historic position and its 
material context. 

3. But Lotze is not yet done with the problem of validity, 
even from his own standpoint. The ground shifts again 
under his feet. It is no longer a question of the validity of 
the idea or meaning with which thought is supposed to set 
out; it is no longer a question of the validity of the process 
of thinking in reference to its own product; it is the ques- 
tion of the validity of the product. Supposing, after all, 
that the final meaning, or logical idea, is thoroughly coher- 
ent and organized ; supposing it is an object for all conscious- 
ness as such. Once more arises the question: What is the 
validity of even the most coherent and complete idea? — a 
question which rises and will not down. We may recon- 
struct our notion of the chimera until it ceases to be an 
independent idea and becomes a part of the system of Greek 
mythology. Has it gained in validity in ceasing to be 
an independent myth, in becoming an element in sys- 
tematized myth? Myth it was and myth it remains. 
Mythology does not get validity by growing bigger. How 
do we know the same is not the case with the ideas which 
are the product of our most deliberate and extended scien- 
tific inquiry? The reference again to the content as the 
self -identical object of all consciousness proves nothing; 
the matter of a hallucination does not gain worth in propor- 
tion to its social contagiousness. Or the reference proves 
that we have not as yet reached any conclusion, but are enter- 
taining a hypothesis — since social validity is not a matter of 



The Content and Object of Thought 83 

mere common content, but of securing participation in a 
commonly adjudged social experience through action directed 
thereto and directed by consensus of judgment. 

According to Lotze, the final product is, after all, still 
thought. Now, Lotze is committed once for all to the notion 
that thought, in any form, is directed by and at an outside 
reality. The ghost haunts him to the last. How, after all, 
does even the ideally perfect valid thought apply or refer to 
reality? Its genuine subject is still beyond itself. At the 
last Lotze can dispose of this question only by regarding 
it as a metaphysical, not a logical, problem (Vol. II, pp. 
281, 282). In other words, logically speaking, we are at the 
end just exactly where we were at the beginning — in the 
sphere of ideas, and of ideas only, plus a consciousness of 
the necessity of referring these ideas to a reality which is 
beyond them, which is utterly inaccessible to them, which is 
out of reach of any influence which they may exercise, and 
which transcends any possible comparison with their results. 
"It is vain," says Lotze, "to shrink from acknowledging the 
circle here involved .... all we know of the external world 
depends upon the ideas of it which are within us" (Vol. II, 
p. 185). "It is then this varied world of ideas within us 
which forms the sole material directly given to us " (Vol. II, 
p. 186). As it is the only material given to us, so it is the 
only material with which thought can end. To talk about 
knowing the external world through ideas which are merely 
within us is to talk of an inherent self-contradiction. There 
is no common ground in which the external world and our 
ideas can meet. In other words, the original implication of 
a separation between an independent thought-material and 
an independent thought-function and purpose lands us inev- 
itably in the metaphysics of subjective idealism, plus a -» 
belief in an unknown reality beyond, which unknowable is yet 
taken as the ultimate test of the value of our ideas as just 



84 Studies in Logical Theory 

subjective. The subjectivity of the psychical event infects 
at the last the meaning or ideal object. Because it has been 
taken to be something "in itself," thought is also something 
"in itself," and at the end, after all our maneuvering we are 
where we began : — with two separate disparates, one of 
meaning, but no existence, the other of existence, but no 
meaning. 

The other aspect of Lotze' s contradiction which completes 
the circle is clear when we refer to his original propositions, 
and recall that at the outset he was compelled to regard the 
origination and conjunctions of the impressions, the elements 
of ideas, as themselves the effects exercised by a world of 
things already in existence (see p. 31). He sets up an 
independent world of thought, and yet has to confess that 
both at its origin and termination it points with absolute 
necessity to a world beyond itself. Only the stubborn 
refusal to take this initial and terminal reference of thought 
beyond itself as having a historic meaning, indicating a par- 
ticular place of generation and a particular point of fulfilment 
in the drama of evolving experience, compels Lotze to give 
such bifold objective reference a purely metaphysical turn. 

When Lotze goes on to say (Vol. II, p. 191) that the 
measure of truth of particular parts of experience is found in 
asking whether, when judged by thought, they are in harmony 
with other parts of experience ; when he goes on to say that 
there is no sense in trying to compare the entire world of 
ideas with a reality which is non-existent, excepting as it 
itself should become an idea, Lotze lands where he might 
better have frankly commenced. 1 He saves himself from utter 

i Lotze even goes so far in this connection as to say that the antithesis between 
our ideas and the objects to which they are directed is itself a part of the world of 
ideas (Vol. II, p. 192). Barring the phrase " world of ideas " (as against world of 
continuous experiencing) he need only have commenced at this point to have traveled 
straight and arrived somewhere. But it is absolutely impossible to hold both this 
view and that of the original independent existence of something given to and in 
thought and an independent existence of a thought-activity, thought-forms, and 
thought-contents. 



The Content and Object of Thought 85 

skepticism only by claiming that the explicit assumption of 
skepticism, the need of agreement of a ready-made idea as 
such, with an extraneous independent material as such, is 
meaningless. He defines correctly the work of thought as 
consisting in harmonizing the various portions of experi- 
ence with each other: a definition which has meaning only 
in connection with the fact that experience is continually inte- 
grating itself into a wholeness of coherent meaning deep- 
ened in significance by passing through an inner distraction 
in which by means of conflict certain contents are rendered 
partial and hence objectively conscious. In this case the 
test of thought is the harmony or unity of experience actually 
effected. In that sense the test of reality is beyond thought, 
as thought, just as at the other limit thought originates out 
of a situation which is not reflectional in character. Inter- 
pret this before and beyond in a historic sense, as an affair of 
the place occupied and role played by thinking as a function 
in experience in relation to other functions, and the inter- 
mediate and instrumental character of thought, its dependence 
upon unreflective antecedents for its existence, and upon a 
consequent experience for its test of final validity, becomes 
significant and necessary. Taken at large, it plunges us in 
the depths of a hopelessly complicated and self-revolving 
metaphysic. 



A CRITICAL STUDY OF BOSANQUET'S THEORY OF 

JUDGMENT 1 

Bosanquet's theory of the judgment, in common with all 
such theories of the judgment, necessarily involves the 
metaphysical problem of the nature of reality and of the 
relation of thought to reality. That the judgment is the 
function by which knowledge is attained is a proposition 
which would meet with universal acceptance. But knowl- 
edge is itself a relation of some sort between thought and 
reality. The view which any logician adopts as to the 
nature of the knowledge-process is accordingly conditioned 
by his metaphysical presuppositions as to the nature of 
reality. It is equally true that the theory of the judgment 
developed from any metaphysical standpoint serves as a 
test of the validity of that standpoint. We shall attempt in 
the present paper to show how Bosanquet's theory of the 
judgment develops from his view of the nature of reality, 
and to inquire whether the theory succeeds in giving such 
an account of the knowledge-process as to corroborate the 
presupposition underlying it. 

Bosanquet defines judgment as "the intellectual function 
which defines reality by significant ideas and in so doing 
affirms the reality of those ideas" (p. 104). 2 The form of 
the definition suggests the nature of his fundamental prob- 

1 The criticism of Bosanquet's theory of the judgment offered in this paper is 
from the standpoint of the theory of the judgment developed by Professor John 
Dewey, in his lectures on "The Theory of Logic." While the chief interest of the 
paper, as the title implies, is critical, it has been necessary to devote a portion of it 
to the exposition of the point of view from which the criticism is made. — H. B. T. 

2 The references throughout this paper are to the pages of Vol. I of Bernard 
Bosanquet, Logic or the Morphology of Knowledge, Oxford, 1888. 

86 



Bosanquet's Theoey of Judgment 87 

leni. There is, on the one hand, a world of reality which 
must be regarded as having existence outside of and inde- 
pendently of the thoughts or ideas we are now applying to 
it ; and there is, on the other hand, a world of ideas whose 
value is measured by the possibility of applying them to 
reality, of qualifying reality by them. The judgment is the 
function which makes the connection between these two 
worlds. If judgment merely brought one set of ideas into 
relation with another set, then it could never give us any- 
thing more than purely hypothetical knowledge whose 
application to the real world would remain forever prob- 
lematic. It would mean that knowledge is impossible, 
a result which seems to be contradicted by the existence 
of knowledge. The logician must, therefore, as Bosan- 
quet tells us, regard it as an essential of the act of judg- 
ment that it always refers to a reality which goes beyond 
and is independent of the act itself (p. 104). His cen- 
tral problem thus becomes that of understanding what the 
nature of reality is which permits of being denned by 
ideas, and what the nature of an idea is that it can ever be 
affirmed to be real. How does the real world get represen- 
tation in experience, and what is the guarantee that the 
representation, when obtained, is correct? 

The defining of the problem suggests the view of the 
nature of reality out of which Bosanquet's theory of the 
judgment grows. The real world is to him a world which 
has its existence quite independently of the process by 
which it is known. The real world is there to be known, 
and is in no wise modified by the knowledge which we 
obtain of it. The work of thought is to build up a world of 
ideas which shall represent, or correspond to, the world of 
reality. The more complete and perfect the correspondence, 
the greater our store of knowledge. 

Translated into terms of the judgment, this representa- 



88 Studies in Logical Theory 

tional view means that the subject of the judgment must 
always be reality, while the predicate is an idea. But when 
we examine the content of any universal judgment, or even of 
an ordinary judgment of perception, the subject which 
appears in the judgment is evidently not reality at all, if by 
reality we mean something which is in no sense constituted 
by the thought-process. When I say, "The tree is green," 
the subject, tree, cannot be regarded as a bit of reality 
which is given ready-made to the thought-process. The 
ability to perceive a tree, to distinguish it from other 
objects and single it out for the application of an idea, 
evidently implies a long series of previous judgments. 
The content "tree" is itself ideal. As Bosanquet forcibly 
states it: "If a sensation or elementary perception is in 
consciousness (and if not we have nothing to do with it 
in logic), it already bears the form of thinking" (p. 33). 
How, then, can it serve as the subject of a judgment? 
Bosanquet's solution of the problem is to say that the real 
subject of a judgment is not the grammatical subject which 
appears in a proposition, but reality itself. In the more 
complex forms of judgment the reference to reality is dis- 
guised by the introduction of explicit ideas to designate 
the portion of reality to which reference is made (pp. 78, 
79). In the simplest type of judgment known, however, the 
qualitative judgment of perception, the reference to reality 
appears within the judgment itself. The relations of thought 
to reality and of the elements of the judgment to one 
another can, accordingly, most readily be seen in the con- 
sideration of this rudimentary form of judgment in which 
the various parts lie bare before us. 
Bosanquet describes it as follows: 

If I say, pointing to a particular house, " That is my home," it 
is clear that in this act of judgment the reference conveyed by the 
demonstrative is indispensable. The significant idea " my home " 



Bosanquet's Theory of Judgment 89 

is affirmed, not of any other general significant idea in my mind, 
but of something which is rendered unique by being present to me 
in perception In making the judgment, " That is my home," I 
extend the present sense-perception of a house in a certain land- 
scape by attaching to it the ideal content or meaning of " home ; " 
and moreover, in doing this, I pronounce the ideal content to be, 
so to speak, of one and the same tissue with what I have before 
me in my actual perception That is to say, I affirm the meaning 
of the idea, or the idea considered as a meaning, to be a real quality 
of that which I perceive in my perception. 

The same account holds good of every perceptive judgment ; 
when I see a white substance on a plate and judge that "it is 
bread " I affirm the reference, or general meaning which consti- 
tutes the symbolic idea " bread " in my mind, to be a real quality 
of the spot or point in present perception which I attempt to des- 
ignate by the demonstrative "this." The act defines the given 
but indefinite real by affirmation of a quality, and affirms reality of 
the definite quality by attaching it to the previously undefined 
real. Reality is given for me in present sensuous perception, and 
in the immediate feeling of my own sentient existence that goes 
with it. (Pp. 76, 77.) 

Again, he says that the general features of the judgment 
of perception are as follows : 

There is a presence of a something in contact with our sensi- 
tive self, which, as being so in contact, has the character of reality; 
and there is the qualification of this reality by the reference to it 
of some meaning such as can be symbolized by a name (p. 77). 

Our point of contact with reality, the place where reality 
gets into the thought-process, is, according to this view, to 
be found in the simplest, most indefinite type of judgment 
of perception. We meet with reality in the mere unde- 
fined " this " of primitive experience. But each such ele- 
mentary judgment about an undefined "this" is an isolated 
bit of experience. Each " this" could give us only a detached 
bit of reality at best, and the further problem now confronts 
us of how we ever succeed in piecing our detached bits of 



90 Studies in Logical Theoey 

reality together to form a real world. Bosanquet's explana- 
tion is, in his words, this: 

The real world, as a definite organized system, is for me an 
extension of this present sensation and self-feeling by means of 
judgment, and it is the essence of judgment to effect and sustain 
such an extension (p. 77). 

Again he says: 

The subject in every judgment of Perception is some given spot 
or point in sensuous contact with the percipient self. But, as all 
reality is continuous, the subject is not merely this given spot or 
point. It is impossible to confine the real world within this or that 
presentation. Every definition or qualification of a point in pres- 
ent perception is affirmed of the real world which is continuous 
with present perception. The ultimate subject of the perceptive 
judgment is the real world as a whole, and it is of this that, in 
judging, we affirm the qualities or characteristics. (P. 78.) 

The problem is the same as that with which Bradley 
struggles in his treatment of the subject of the judgment, 
and the solution is also the same. Bradley's treatment 
of the point is perhaps somewhat more explicit. Like 
Bosanquet, he starts with the proposition that the subject of 
the judgment must be reality itself and not an idea, be- 
cause, if it were the latter, judgment could never give us 
anything but a union of ideas, and a union of ideas remains 
forever universal and hypothetical. It can never acquire 
the uniqueness, the singularity, which is necessary to make 
it refer to the real. Uniqueness can be found only in our 
contact with the real. But just where does our contact 
with the real occur? Bradley recognizes the fact that it 
cannot be the content — even in the case of a simple sensa- 
tion — which gives us reality. The content of a sensation is a 
thing which is in my consciousness, and which has the form 
which it presents because it is in my consciousness. Reality 
is precisely something which is not itself sensation, and can- 
not be in my consciousness. If I say, "This is white," the 



Bosanquet's Theory of Judgment 91 

"this" has a content which is a sensation of whiteness. 
But the sensation of whiteness is not reality. The experi- 
ence brings with it an assurance of reality, not because its 
content is the real, but because it is " my direct encounter 
in sensible presentation with the real world." 1 To make 
the matter clearer, Bradley draws a distinction between the 
this and the thisness. In every experience, however simple, 
there is a content — a "thisness" — which is not itself 
unique. Considered merely as content, it is applicable to an 
indefinite number of existences; in other words, it is an 
idea. But there is also in every experience a "this" which 
is unique, but which is not a content. It is a mere sign of 
existence which gives the experience uniqueness, but nothing 
else. The "thisness" falls on the side of the content, and 
the "this" on the side of existence. It is exactly the dis- 
tinction which Bosanquet has in mind in the passages quoted 
in which he tells us that "reality is given for me in present 
sensuous perception, and in the immediate feeling of my 
own sentient existence which goes with it;" and again when 
he says: " There is a presence of a something in contact 
with our sensitive self, which, as being so in contact, has the 
character of reality." The same point is made somewhat 
more explicitly in his introduction when he says that the 
individual's present perception is not, indeed, reality as 
such, but is his present point of contact with reality as 
such (p. 3). 

But has this distinction between the content of an ex- 
perience and its existence solved the problem of how we 
know reality ? When Bosanquet talks of knowing reality, 
he means possessing ideas which are an accurate reproduc- 
tion of reality. It is still far from clear how, according to 
his own account, we could ever have any assurance that our 
ideas do represent reality accurately, if we can nowhere find 

1 F. H. Bbadley, Principles of Logic, p. 64. 



92 Studies in Logical Theoey 

a point at which the content of an experience can be held to 
give us reality. The case is still worse when we go beyond 
the problem of how any particular bit of reality can be 
known, and ask ourselves how reality as a whole can be 
known. The explanation offered by both Bradley and 
Bosanquet is that by means of judgment we extend the bit 
of reality of whose existence we get a glimpse through a 
peep-hole in the curtain of sensuous perception, and thus 
build up the organized system of reality. In a passage pre- 
viously quoted, Bosanquet tells us that all reality is continu- 
ous, and therefore the real subject of a judgment cannot be 
the mere spot or point which is given in sensuous percep- 
tion, but must be the real world as a whole. But how does 
he know that reality is continuous, and that the real world is 
an organized system ? Our only knowledge of reality comes 
through judgment, and judgment brings us into contact with 
reality only at isolated points. When he tells us that reality 
is a continuous whole, he does so on the basis of a meta- 
physical presupposition which is not justifiable by his theory 
of the judgment. The only statement about reality which 
could be maintained on the basis of his theory is that some 
sort of a reality exists, but the theory furnishes equal justifi- 
cation for the assurance that this reality is of such a nature 
that we can never know anything more about it than the 
bare fact of its existence. Moreover, the bare fact of the exist- 
ence of reality comes to us merely in the form of a feeling of 
our own sentient existence which goes with sense-perception. 
But the mere assurance that somewhere behind the curtain 
of sensuous perception reality exists (even if this could go 
unchallenged), accompanied by the certainty that we can never 
by any possibility know anything more about it, is practi- 
cally equivalent to the denial of the possibility of knowledge. 1 

i The difficulty, of course, is not a merely formal one, much less a verbal one. 
Instinctively we grant to Bosanquet his statement that reality is a continuous 
whole; we feel it almost captious to question his right to it. But why? Because 



Bosanquet's Theory of Judgment 93 

Although the denial of the possibility of knowledge seems 
to be the logical outcome of the premises, it is not the con- 
clusion reached by Bosanquet. At the outset of his treatise, 
Bosanquet propounds the fundamental question we have 
been considering in these words: "How does the analysis 
of knowledge as a systematic function, or system of func- 
tions, explain that relationship in which truth appears to 
consist, between the human intelligence on the one hand, 
and fact or reality on the other?" His answer is: "To this 
difficulty there is only one reply. If the object-matter of 
reality lay genuinely outside the system of thought, not only 
our analysis, but thought itself, would be unable to lay hold of 
reality." (Pp. 2, 3.) The statement is an explicit recognition 
of the impossibility of bridging the chasm between a reality 
outside the content of knowledge and a known real world. 
It brings before us the dilemma contained in Bosanquet's 
treatment of the subject of the judgment. On the one hand 
the subject of the judgment must be outside the realm of my 
thoughts. If it were not, judgment would merely establish 
a relation between my ideas and would give me no knowledge 
of the real world. On the other hand, the subject of the 
judgment must be within the realm of my thoughts. If it 
were not, I could never assert anything of it; could never 
judge, or know it. The stress he lays on the first horn of 
the dilemma has been shown. It remains to show his recog- 
nition of the second horn, and to find out whether or not he 
discovers any real reconciliation between the two. 

Bosanquet sums up the section of the introduction on 
knowledge and its content, truth, with the following para- 
graph; 

the content of judgment is continuous ; judgment is always engaged with the deter- 
mination of a related totality. But if all content- is ideal, and judgment is just the 
application of this content to reality in virtue of an isolated contact, surely it begs 
the entire question to say that reality apart from the content applied is continuous, 
and then to use this assertion to justify the objective validity of the judgment — its 
element of permanent truth. 



94 Studies in Logical Theoey 

The real world for every individual is thus emphatically his 
world; an extension and determination of his present perception, 
which perception is to him not indeed reality as such, but his point 
of contact with reality as such. Thus in the enquiry which will 
have to be undertaken as to the logical subject of the judgment, we 
shall find that the subject, however it may shift, contract, and 
expand, is always in the last resort some greater or smaller element 
of this determinate reality, which the individual has constructed by 
identifying significant ideas with that world of which he has assur- 
ance through his own perceptive experience. In analyzing common 
judgment it is ultimately one to say that I judge and that the real 
world for me, my real world, extends itself, or maintains its organ- 
ized extension. This is the ultimate connection by which the dis- 
tinction of subject and predication is involved in the act of affirma- 
tion or enunciation which is the differentia of judgment. (Pp. 3, 4). 

Here the subject of the judgment appears as an element 
of a reality which the individual has constructed by identify- 
ing significant ideas with that world of which he has assur- 
ance through his own perceptive experience. But the very 
point with reference to the subject of the judgment pre- 
viously emphasized is that it is not and cannot be something 
which the individual has constructed. The subject of the 
judgment must be reality, and reality does not consist of 
ideas, even if it be determined by them. It does not mend 
matters to explain that the individual has constructed his 
real world by identifying significant ideas with that world of 
which he has assurance through his own perceptive experi- 
ences, because, as we have seen, " the individual's perceptive 
experiences" either turn out to be merely similar mental 
constructions made at a prior time, so that nothing is gained 
by attaching to them, or else they mean once more the mere 
shock of contact which is supposed to give assurance that some 
sort of reality exists, but which gives no assurance of what 
it is. That and what, this and thisness still remain detached. 
When he talks of the real world for any individual we are 
left entirely in the dark as to what the relation between the 



Bosanquet's Theory op Judgment 95 

real ivorld as it is for any individual and the real world as 
it is for itself may be, or how the individual is to gain any 
assurance that the real world as it is for him represents the 
real ivorld as it is for itself. 

Another attempt at a reconciliation of these opposing views 
leaves us no better satisfied. The passage is as follows: 

The real world, as a definite organized system, is for me an 
extension of this present sensation and self-feeling by means of 
judgment, and it is the essence of judgment to effect and sustain 
such an extension. It makes no essential difference whether the 
ideas whose content is pronounced to be an attribute of reality 
appear to fall within what is given in perception, or not. We shall 
find hereafter that it is vain to attempt to lay down boundaries 
between the given and its extension. The moment we try to do 
this we are on the wrong track. The given and its extension differ 
not absolutely but relatively; they are continuous with each other, 
and the metaphor by which we speak of an extension conceals from 
us that the so-called "given" is no less artificial than that by 
which it is extended. It is the character and quality of being 
directly in contact with sense-perception, not any fixed datum of 
content, that forms the constantly shifting center of the individual's 
real world, and spreads from that center over every extension which 
the system of reality receives from judgment. (P. 77.) 

In this passage by the "given" he evidently means the 
content of sensory experience, the thisness, the what. It is, 
as he says, of the same stuff as that by which it is extended. 
Both the given and that by which it is extended are artificial 
in the sense of not being real according to Bosanquet's 
interpretation of reality; they are ideas. But if all this is 
admitted, what becomes of the possibility of knowledge? 
Bosanquet undertakes to rescue it by assuring us again that 
it is the character and quality of being directly in contact 
with sense-perception, not any fixed datum of content, that 
forms the center of the individual's real world and gives the 
stamp of reality to his otherwise ideal extension of this 
center. Here again we find ourselves with no evidence 



96 Studies in Logical Theoey 

that the content of our knowledge bears any relation to 
reality. We have merely the feeling of vividness attached 
to sensory experience which seems to bring us the certainty 
that there is some sort of a reality behind it, but this is 
not to give assurance that our ideal content even belongs 
rightfully to that against which we have bumped, much 
less of how it belongs — and only this deserves the title 
"knowledge." 

In the chapter on "Quality and Comparison," in which 
he takes up the more detailed treatment of the simplest 
types of judgment of perception, he comes back to the same 
contradiction, and again attempts to explain how both horns 
of his dilemma must be true. The passage is this : 

The Reality to which we ascribe the predicate is undoubtedly 
self -existent ; it is not merely in my mind or in my act of judg- 
ment ; if it were, the judgment would only be a game with my 
ideas. It is well to make this clear in the case before us, for in the 
later forms of the judgment it will be much disguised. Still the 
reality which attracts my concentrated attention is also within my 
act of judgment ; it is not even the whole reality present to my 
perception ; still less of course the whole self -existent Reality 
which I dimly presuppose. The immediate subject of the judg- 
ment is a mere aspect, too indefinite to be described by explicit 
ideas except in as far as the qualitative predication imposes a first 
specification upon it. This Reality is in my judgment ; it is the 
point at which the actual world impinges upon my consciousness 
as real, and it is only by judging with reference to this point that I 
can refer the ideal content before my mind to the whole of reality 
which I at once believe to exist, and am attempting to construct. 
The Subject is both in and out of the Judgment, as Reality is both 
in and out of my consciousness. (Pp. 113, 114.) 

The conclusion he reaches is a mere restatement of the 
difficulty. The problem he is trying to solve is how the 
subject can be both in and out of the judgment, and how 
the subject without is related to the subject within. The 
mere assertion that it is so does not help us to understand it. 



Bosanquet's Theory of Judgment 97 

His procedure seems like taking advantage of two mean- 
ings of sense-perception, its conscious quality and its brute 
abrupt immediacy, and then utilizing this ambiguity to solve 
a problem which grows out of the conception of judgment 
as a reference of idea to reality. 

Turning from his treatment of the world of fact to his 
discussion of the world of idea, from the subject to the 
predicate, as it appears in his theory of the judgment we 
find again a paradox which must be recognized and cannot 
be obviated. An idea is essentially a meaning. It is not 
a particular existence whose essence is uniqueness as is the 
case with the subject of the judgment, but is a meaning 
whose importance is that it may apply to an indefinite num- 
ber of unique existences. Its characteristic is universality. 
And yet an idea regarded as a psychical existence, an idea 
as a content in my mind, is just as particular and unique as 
any other existence. How, then, does it obtain its charac- 
teristic of universality ? Bosanquet's answer is that it must 
be universal by means of a reference to something other 
than itself. Its meaning resides, not in its existence as a 
psychical image, but in its reference to something beyond 
itself. Now, any idea that is affirmed is referred to reality, 
but do ideas exist which are not being affirmed ? If so, 
their reference cannot be to reality. Bosanquet discusses 
the question in the second section of his introduction as fol- 
lows : 

It is not easy to deny that there is a world of ideas or of mean- 
ings, which simply consists in that identical reference of symbols 
by which mutual understanding between rational beings is made 
possible. A mere suggestion, a mere question, a mere negation, 
seem all of them to imply that we sometimes entertain ideas with- 
out affirming them of reality, and therefore without affirming their 
reference to be a reference to something real or their meaning to 
be fact. We may be puzzled indeed to say what an idea can 
mean, or to what it can refer, if it does not mean or refer to some- 



98 Studies in Logical Theory 

thing real — to some element in the fabric continuously sustained 
by the judgment which is our consciousness. On the other hand, 
it would be shirking a difficulty to neglect the consideration that 
an idea, while denied of reality, may nevertheless, or even must, 
possess an identical and so intelligible reference — a symbolic 
value — for the rational beings who deny it. A reference, it may 
be argued, must be a reference to something. But it seems as 
if in this case the something were the fact of reference itself, 
the rational convention between intelligent beings, or rather the 
world which has existence, whether for one rational being or for 
many, merely as contained in and sustained by such intellectual 
reference. 

I only adduce these considerations in order to explain that 
transitional conception of an objective world or world of meanings, 
distinct from the real world or world of facts, with which it is 
impossible wholly to dispense in an account of thought starting 
from the individual subject. The paradox is that the real world 
or world of fact thus seems for us to fall within and be included 
in the objective world or world of meanings, as if all that is fact 
were meaning, but not every meaning were fact. This results in 
the contradiction that something is objective, which is not real. 
(Pp. 4, 5.) 

In the seventh section of the introduction Bosanquet 
explains his meaning further by what the reader is privi- 
leged to regard as a flight of the imagination — a mere 
simile — which he thinks may, nevertheless, make the matter 
clearer. 

We might try to think that the world, as known to each of us, 
is constructed and sustained by his individual consciousness ; and 
that every other individual also frames for himself, and sustains by 
the action of his intelligence, the world in which he in particular 
lives and moves. Of course such a construction is to be taken as a 
reconstruction, a construction by way of knowledge only ; but for 
our present purpose this is indifferent. Thus we might think of 
the ideas and objects of our private world rather as corresponding to 
than as from the beginning identical with those which our fellow - 
men are occupied in constructing each within his own sphere of 
consciousness. And the same would be true even of the objects and 



Bosanquet's Theory of Judgment 99 

contents within our own world, in as far as an act or effort would 
be required to maintain them, of the same kind with that which 

was originally required to construct them Thus the paradox 

of reference would become clearer. We should understand that we 
refer to a correspondence by means of a content. We should soften 
down the contradiction of saying that a name to meet which we have 
and can get nothing but an idea, nevertheless does not stand for that 
idea but for something else. We should be able to say that the 
name stands for those elements in the idea which correspond in all 
our separate worlds, and in our own world of yesterday and of 
today, considered as so corresponding. (Pp. 45, 46.) 

According to this view, the idea obtains the universality 
which constitutes it an idea by a sort of process of elimina- 
tion. It is like a composite photograph. It selects only 
the common elements in a large number of particular exist- 
ences, and thus succeeds in representing, or referring to, all 
the particular existences which have gone to make it up. 
But when we come to consider the bearing which this view 
of universality, or generalized significance, has on our esti- 
mate of the knowledge-process, we feel that it has not solved 
the problem for us. In the first place, the idea in its exist- 
ence is just as particular when regarded as made up of the 
common elements of many ideas as is any of the ideas whose 
elements are taken. A composite photograph is just as 
much a single photograph as any one of the photographs 
which are taken to compose it. The chasm between the 
particularity of the psychical image and the universality 
of its meaning is not bridged by regarding the content 
of the image as made up by eliminating unlike elements 
in a number of images. The stuff with which thought has 
to work is still nothing more than a particular psychical 
image, and the problem of what gives it its logical value 
as a general significance is still unsolved. Nor does it 
seem possible to find anything in the existence of the image 
which could account for its reference to something outside 

Lore. 



100 Studies in Logical Theory 

of itself. The fact of reference itself becomes an ultimate 
mystery. 1 

But even waiving this difficulty, the judgment must still 
appear truncated, if it really totally disregard a part of its 
content — i. e., the particular existence of the image as part 
of the judging consciousness. The theory holds that the 
particular existence of the image has no logical value. It 
is only its meaning, or general reference, which has logi- 
cal value. But the image qua image is just as real as that 
to which it is supposed to refer. If the judgment really 
does ignore its existence, then it ignores a portion of the 
reality it attempts to represent, and stands self-confessed 
as a failure. 2 At still another point, ideas, as Bosanquet rep- 
resents them, prove to be unsatisfactory tools to use in the 
work of building up reality. In Bosanquet' s words: "The 
meaning tyrannizes over the psychical image in another 
respect. Besides crushing out of sight its particular and 
exclusive existence, it also crushes out part of its content" 
(p. 74). The idea, as we use it, is not, as to content, a 
complete or accurate representation of anything real. To 
take Bosanquet' s illustration : 

Some one speaks to me of the iEgean sea, which I have never 
seen. He tells me that it is a deep blue sea under a cloudless sky, 
studded with rocky islands. The meanings of these words are a 
problem set to my thought. I have to meet him in the world of 
objective references, which as intelligent beings we have in com- 
mon. How I do this is my own affair, and the precise images at 
my command will vary from day to day, and from minute to min- 
ute. It sounds simple to say that I combine my recollections of 
sea and sky at Torbay with those of the island-studded waters of 

i There is good reason for believing that Mr. Bosanquet escapes, in his own 
mind, the difficulty by the term " correspondence." " The name stands for these ele- 
ments in the idea which correspond in the separate worlds ; " we may even be accused 
of injustice in confusing this correspondence with bare identity of existence. But if 
one idea corresponds to another in the sense of referring to it, what is this but the 
fact to be explained — how an existence can refer beyond itself? 

2 This conclusion is clearly recognized by Bbadley, Appearance and Reality, 
chap. 4. 



Bosanquet's Theoky of Judgment 101 

Orkney or the Hebrides. Even so, there is much to adjust and 
to neglect ; the red cliffs of Torbay, and the cloudy skies of the 
north. But then again, my recollections are already themselves 
symbolic ideas ; the reference to Torbay or the Hebrides is itself 
a problem set to thought, and puts me upon the selection of index- 
elements in fugitive images that are never twice the same. I have 
first to symbolize the color of Torbay, using for the purpose any 
blue that I can call to mind, and fixing, correcting, subtracting 
from, the color so recalled, till I reduce it to a mere index quality; 
and then I have to deal in the same way with the meaning or sig- 
nificant idea so obtained, clipping and adjusting the qualities of 
Torbay till it seems to serve as a symbol of the JEgean. (Pp. 74, 75.) 

And by the time all this is performed what sort of a rep- 
resentation of reality is the idea ? Evidently a very poor and 
meager and fragmentary one. 

It is so poor and fragmentary, that it cannot itself be 
that which is affirmed of reality. It must be some other 
fuller existence to be found in the world of meanings which 
is affirmed. And yet how the meager content of the idea 
succeeds in referring to the world of meanings, and acting 
as the instrument for referring a meaning to reality, is not 
at all clear. It seems impossible to explain reference intel- 
ligibly by the concept of a correspondence of contents. 

The fundamental difficulty in the interpretation of the 
predicate is the same one that we encountered in the inter- 
pretation of the subject. If the predicate is to be affirmed 
of reality (and if it be not, it has no logical value), then it 
must, when affirmed, be in some sense an accurate represen- 
tation of reality. But the predicate is an idea, and, more- 
over, an idea which is, both in its existence and in its mean- 
ing palpably the outcome of transformations wrought upon 
given sensory contents by the individual consciousness. Since 
the one point of contact with reality is in sensory experience, 
the more simple sensory experiences are reacted upon and 
worked over, the farther they recede from reality. The idea 



102 Studies in Logical Theory 

seems, therefore, in its very essence, a thing which never 
can be affirmed of reality. As image it is itself a reality, 
but not affirmed; as meaning it is that reality (the image) 
manipulated for individual ends. Why suppose that by dis- 
torting reality we get it in shape to affirm of reality ? More- 
over, the farther an idea is removed from immediate sen- 
sory experience — in other words, the more abstract it 
becomes — the less is the possibility of affirming it of reality. 
The final outcome of this point of view, if we adhere rigor- 
ously to its logic is that the more thinking we do, the less we 
know about the real world. Bosanquet avoids this conclu- 
sion by a pure act of faith. If knowledge is to be rescued, 
we must believe that the work done by consciousness upon 
the bits of reality given in sensory experience really does 
succeed in building up a knowledge of reality for us. As 
Bosanquet puts it : "The presentation of Reality, qualified 
by an ideal content, is one aspect of Subject and Predication; 
and my individual percipient consciousness determining 
itself by a symbolic idea is the other. That the latter is 
identified with the former follows from the claim of con- 
scious thought that its nature is to know." 1 (P. 83.) 

To sum up the situation, Bosanquet starts out with the 
assumption that by knowledge we must mean knowledge of a 
world entirely independent of our ideas. If we fail to make 
this assumption, knowledge becomes merely a relation between 
ideas. But its whole importance seems to us to rest on 
the conviction that it does give us knowledge of a world 
which is what it is quite independently of our ideas about it, 
and cannot in any sense be modified by what we think about 
it. What knowledge does is to give us a copy or represen- 
tation of the real world, whose value depends on the accuracy 

1 It would be suggestive to inquire in what sense conscious thought claims to 
know. Is it a general claim which thought qua thought puts forth, or is it the claim 
of the content of some particular thought? The former, of course, is a mere pious 
aspiration having no reference to specific validity or truth ; the latter is precisely the 
problem under consideration. 



Bosanquet's Theory of Judgment 103 

of the representation. And yet when we examine any indi- 
vidual knowing consciousness, the subject which appears 
within the judgment is never some portion of the world 
which exists outside of the knowing consciousness, but always 
some portion of the world which exists within the knowing 
consciousness, and which is constituted by the knowledge 
process. The predicate which is affirmed of reality is con- 
stantly found to derive its meaning, its generalized signifi- 
cance, not from its correspondence with, or reference to, the 
real world outside of the knowing consciousness, but from 
reference to a world of meanings, which consists in a sort of 
convention among rational beings — a world whose existence 
is distinctly within the knowing consciousness and not out- 
side of it. 1 Between the real world, as Bosanquet conceives 
it, and the world of knowledge, we find inserted on the side 
of the subject, the world as known to each of us, and on the 
side of the predicate, the objective world of meanings. 
Neither of these is the real world. Both of them are ideal, i. e., 
are constructions of the individual consciousness. We nowhere 
find any satisfactory explanation of how these ideal worlds 
are related to the real world. There is merely the assertion 
that we must believe that they represent the real world in 
order that we may believe that knowledge exists. But the 
fact remains that whenever we try to analyze and explain 
any particular judgment, what we find ourselves dealing with 
is always the world as it exists to us as subject, and the 
objective world of meanings as predicate. If we stop here, 
then knowledge turns out to be just what Bosanquet asserted 
at the outset that it was not, i. e., a relation between ideas. 
When we demand a justification for going farther than 
this, we find none except the claim of conscious thought 
that its nature is to know — a claim whose justice we have 

1 Bosanquet would seem to have followed Lotze in this insertion of a world of 
" meanings " intermediate between the individual idea as such and the real object 
as such. See the criticism already passed, pp. 93-5. 



104 Studies in Logical Theory 

no possible means of testing, and which would not, even if 
admitted, be of the slightest vahie in deciding which par- 
ticular judgment is true and which false. 

Bosanquet's development of his subject has proved to be 
throughout the necessary logical outcome of the presuppo- 
sitions with reference to reality from which he starts. The 
fundamental difficulty of erecting a theory of the knowledge- 
process upon such a basis is recognized by him at the start 
in a passage already quoted: "If the object-matter of reality 
lay genuinely outside the system of thought, not only our 
analysis, but thought itself, would be unable to lay hold of 
reality" (p. 2). But, in spite of this assertion, his funda- 
mental conception of reality remains that of a system which 
does lie outside the thought-process. His theory is an 
attempt to reconcile the essentially irreconcilable views that 
reality is outside of the thought-process, and that it is inside 
of the thought-process, and he succeeds only by calling upon 
our faith that so it is. < 

If it be true, as it seems to him to be, that we are com- 
pelled to adhere to both of these views of reality, then surely 
there is no other outcome. It means, however, that we finally 
resign all hope of knowing reality. We may have faith in 
its existence, but we have no way of deciding what particu- 
lar judgment has reality in it as it should have it, and what 
as it should not. All stand (and fall) on the same basis. 
But does not Bosanquet himself point out a pathway which, 
if followed farther, would reach a more satisfactory view of 
the realm of knowledge ? He has shown us that the only 
sort of reality we know, or can know, is the reality which 
appears within our judgment-process — the reality as known 
to us. Would it not be possible to drop the presupposed 
reality outside of the judgment-process (with which judg- 
ment is endeavoring to make connections) and content our- 
selves with the sort of reality which appears within the 



Bosanquet's Theory of Judgment 105 

judgment-process? In other words, may there not be a 
satisfactory view of reality which frankly recognizes its 
organic relation to the knowledge-process, without at the 
same time destroying its value as reality? Is it possible to 
admit that reality is in a sense constituted in the judgment 
without making it at the same time the figment of the indi- 
vidual imagination — "a game with ideas"? 

Let us assume for the moment that the real difficulty 
with Mr. Bosanquet's conception, the error that keeps him 
traveling in his hopeless circles, is the notion that truth is a 
matter of reference of ideas as such to reality as such, lead- 
ing us to oscillate between the alternatives that either all 
ideas have such reference, and so are true, constitute knowl- 
edge; or else none have such reference, and so are false; or 
else are mere ideas to which neither truth nor falsity can be 
attributed. Let us ask if truth is not rather some specific 
relation within experience, something which characterizes 
one idea rather than another, so that our problem is not how 
an idea can refer to a reality beyond itself, but what are the 
marks by which we discriminate a true reference from a 
false one. Then let us ask for the criterion used in daily 
life and in science by which to test reality. 

If we ask the philosophically unsophisticated individual 
why he believes that his house still exists when he is away 
from it and has no immediate evidence of the fact, he will tell 
you it is because he has found that he can go back to it time 
and again and see it and walk into it. It never fails him when 
he acts upon the assumption that it is there. He would 
never tell you that he believed in its existence when he was 
not experiencing it because his mental picture of his house 
stood for and represented accurately an object in the real 
world which was nevertheless of a different order of existence 
from his mental picture. When you ask the physicist why 
he believes that the laws of motion are true, he will tell you 






106 Studies in Logical Theoey 

that it is because he finds that bodies always do behave 
according to them. He can predict just what a body will 
do under given circumstances. He is never disappointed 
however long he takes it for granted that the laws of motion 
are true and that bodies behave according to them. The 
only thing that could make him question their truth would 
be to find some body which did not prove to behave in 
accordance with them. The criterion is the same in both 
cases. It is the practical criterion of what as a matter of 
fact will work. That which can safely be taken for granted 
as a basis for further action is regarded as real and true. It 
remains real so long, and only so long, as it continues to 
fulfil this condition. As soon as it ceases to do so, it 
ceases to be regarded as real. When a man finds that he 
can no longer obtain the accustomed experience of seeing 
and entering his house, he ceases to regard it as real. It 
has burned down, or been pulled down. When a physicist 
finds that a body does not, as a matter of fact, behave as a 
given law leads him to expect it would behave, he ceases to 
regard the law as true. 

The contrast between the naive view of the criterion 
of reality and the one we have just been discussing may 
be brought out by considering how we should have to 
interpret from each standpoint the constant succession of 
facts in the history of science which have ceased to be facts. 
For illustration take the former fact that the earth is flat. 
It ceased to be a fact, says the theory we have been 
reviewing, because further thought-constructions of the real 
world convinced us that there is no reality which the idea 
"flat-world" represents. The idea " round- world " alone 
reproduces reality. It ceased to be a fact, says the naive 
view, because it ceased to be a safe guide for action. Men 
found they could sail around the world. Correspondence in 
one case is pictorial, and its existence or non-existence can, 



Bosanquet's Theory of Judgment 107 

as we have seen, never be ascertained. In the other, corre- 
spondence is response, adjustment, the co-meeting of specific 
conditions in further constituting of experience. 

In actual life, therefore, the criterion of reality which we 
use is a practical one. The test of reality does not consist 
in ascertaining the relationship between an idea and an x 
which is not idea, but in ascertaining what experience can 
be taken for granted as a safe basis for securing other expe- 
riences. The evident advantage of the latter view, leaving 
aside for the moment the question of its adequacy in other 
respects, is that it avoids the fundamental skepticism at once 
suggested by the former. How can we ever be sure that the 
fact which we have discovered will stand the test of further 
thought-constructions ? Perhaps it comes no nearer to reality 
than the discarded one. Obviously we never can be sure 
that any particular content of thought represents reality so 
accurately and perfectly that it will never be subject to revi- 
sion. If, however, the test of reality is the adequacy of a 
given content of consciousness as a stimulus to action, as a 
mode of control, we have an applicable standard. A given 
content of consciousness is real — is a fact — so long as the 
act resulting from it is adequate in adaptation to other con- 
tents. It ceases to be real as soon as the act it stimulates 
proves to be inadequate. 

The view which places the ultimate test of facts, not in 
any relationship of contents or existences, but in the prac- 
tical outcome of thought, is the one which seems to follow 
necessarily from a thoroughgoing conception of the judg- 
ment as a function — an act. Our fundamental biological 
conception of the activities of living organisms is that acts 
exist for the sake of their results. Acts are always stimu- 
lated by some definite set of conditions, and their value is 
always tested by the adequacy with which they meet this set 
of conditions. The judgment is no exception to the rule. It 




108 Studies in Logical Theory 

is always an act stimulated by some set of conditions which 
needs readjusting. Its outcome is a readjustment whose 
value is and can be tested only by its adequacy. It is 
accordingly entirely in line with our reigning biological 
conceptions to expect to find the ultimate criterion of truth 
and reality in the practical outcome of thought, and to seek 
for an understanding of the nature of the "real" and of 
the "ideal" within the total activity of judgment. 

One difficulty besets us at the outset of such an investiga- 
tion — that of being sure that we have a genuine judgment 
under examination. A large portion of the so-called judg- 
ments considered by logicians, even by those who emphasize 
the truth that a judgment is an ac/, are really not judgments 
at all, but contents of thought which are the outcome of 
judgments — what might be called dead judgments, instead 
of live judgments. When we analyze a real act of judgment, 
as it occurs in a living process of thought, we find given 
elements which are always present. There is always a cer- 
tain situation which demands a reaction. The situation is 
always in part determined and taken for granted, and in 
part questioned. It is determined in so far as it is a definite 
situation of some sort ; it is undetermined in so far as it fur- 
nishes an inadequate basis for further action and therefore 
comes to consciousness as a problem. For example, take one 
of the judgments Bosanquet uses. "This is bread." We 
have first to inquire when such a judgment actually occurs 
in the living process of thought. A man does not make 
such a judgment in the course of his thinking unless there 
is some instigation to do so. Perhaps he is in doubt as to 
whether the white object he perceives is bread or cake. He 
wants some bread, but does not want cake. A closer inspec- 
tion convinces him that it is bread, and the finished judg- 
ment is formulated in the proposition: "This is bread." 
What is the test of the reality of the bread, and the truth of 



Bosanquet's Theory of Judgment 109 

the judgment? Evidently the act based on it. He eats the 
bread. If it tastes like bread and affects him like bread, 
then the bread was real and the judgment true. If, on the 
other hand, it does not taste like bread, or if it makes him 
violently ill, then the "bread" was not real and the judgment 
was false. In either case, the "this" — the experience to be 
interpreted — is unquestioned. The man does not question 
the fact that he has a perception of a white object. So much 
is taken for granted and is unquestioned within that judg- 
ment. But there is another part of the experience which is 
questioned, and which remains tentative up to the conclusion 
of the act of judgment; that is the doubt as to whether the 
perceived white object is bread or something else. Every 
live judgment, every judgment as it normally occurs in the 
vital process of thought, must have these phases. It is only 
when a judgment is taken out of its context and reduced to 
a mere memorandum of past judgments that it fails to reveal 
such parts. The man may, of course, go farther back. He 
may wonder whether this is really white or not. But he falls 
back then on something else which he takes unquestioningly 
— a "this" experience of some sort or other. 

So far we have considered the practical criterion of reality 
merely as the one which is actually operative in everyday 
life, and as the one suggested by our biological theory of the 
functions of living organisms. It also offers a suggestion 
for the modified view of the nature of reality for which we 
are in search. Our previous discussion brought out inci- 
dentally a contradiction in the traditional theory of the 
nature of reality which it will be worth while to consider 
further. In dealing with the subject of the judgment, 
reality seemed to be made synonymous with fact. In this 
sense fact, or the real, was set off against the ideal. Knowl- 
edge was viewed as the correspondence between real and 
ideal. When we came to deal with the ideal itself — with 




110 Studies in Logical Theoey 

the predicate of the judgment — there appeared in it an ele- 
ment of fact or reality which proved a serious stumbling- 
block for the theory. As image in my mind,i the idea is 
just as real as the so-called facts; but this sort of reality 
according to the theory in question is neither the reality 
about which we are judging nor a real quality of it. Both 
Bradley and Bosanquet are forced to admit that the judg- 
ment ignores it, and is in so far by nature inadequate to its 
appointed task of knowing reality. 

The suggestion which the situation offers for a new theory 
is that the view of reality has been too narrow. Reality 
musTevidently be a broad enough term to cover both fact 
and idea. If so, the reality must be nothing more nor less 
than the total process of experience with its continual 
opposition of fact and idea, and their continual resolution 
through activity. That which previous theory has been 
calling the real is not the total reality, but merely one aspect 
of it. The problem of relation of fact and idea is thus the 
problem of the relation of one form of reality to another, 
and so a determinate soluble one, not a merely metaphysical 
or general one. Granting this, does it still remain true that 
reality in the narrower sense, reality as fact, can be regarded 
as a different order of existence from the ideal, and set over 
against the thought-process ? Evidently not. Fact and idea 
become merely two aspects of a total reality. The way in 
which fact and idea are distinguished has already been sug- 
gested by the practical and biological criterion of fact, or 
reality in the narrower sense. From this point of view, 
fact is not a different order of existence from idea, but is 
merely a part of the total process of experience which func- 
tions in a given way. It is merely that part of experience 
which is taken as given, and which serves as a stimulus to 
action. Thus the essential nature of fact, or reality in the 
popular sense, falls not at all on the side of its content, but 



Bosanquet's Theory of Judgment 111 

on the side of its function. Similarly the ideal is merely 
that part of the total experience which is taken as tentative. 
There is no problem as to how either of them is related to 
reality. In this relationship they are reality. That which 
previous theories had been calling the whole of reality now 
appears as merely one aspect of it — the fact aspect — arti- 
ficially isolated from the rest. 

When we translate this view of the nature of reality into 
terms of a theory of the judgment, we find that we can agree 
with Bosanquet in his definition of a judgment. It is an 
act, and an act which refers an ideal content to reality. 
The judgment must be an act, because it is essentially an 
adaptation — a reaction toward a given situation. The sub- 
ject of the judgment is that part of the content of experience 
which represents the situation to be reacted to. It is that 
which is taken for granted as given in each case. Now this 
is, as we have seen, reality — in the narrower sense of that 
term. What Bosanquet has been calling reality now appears 
merely as the subject of the judgment taken out of its nor- 
mal function and considered as an isolated thing. It is an 
artificial abstraction. It is accordingly true, as Bosanquet 
insists, that the subject of the judgment must always be 
reality — both in his sense of the term and in ours. This 
reality is not real, however, by virtue of its independence 
from the judgment, but by virtue of its function within the 
judgment. His fundamental problem with reference to the 
subject of the judgment is disposed of from this point of 
view. The subject is wholly within the judgment, not in 
any sense outside of it; but it is at the same time true that 
the subject of the judgment is reality. The fact that the 
subjects of all judgments — even those of the most elementary 
type — bear evident marks of the work done by thought upon 
them, ceases to be a problem. The subject is essentially a 
thing constituted by the doubt-inquiry process, and func- 



112 Studies in Logical Theory 

tioning within it. The necessity for an intermediate real 
world as it is to me between the real world and the knowing 
process disappears, because the real world as it is to me is 
the only real world of which the judgment can take account. 
There is no longer any divorce between the content of the 
subject and its existence. Reality in his sense of the term 
— reality as fact — does not fall on the side of existence in 
distinction from content, but on the side of function in dis- 
tinction from content. 

The predicate of the judgment is that part of the total 
experience which is taken as doubtful, or tentative. As we 
have seen, every act of adaptation involves a definite situa- 
tion to be reacted to (subject) and an indefinite or tenta- 
tive material with which to react (predicate). We have 
pointed out that a situation which demands a judgment never 
appears in consciousness as mere questioned or questionable 
situation. 1 There is always present, as soon as the doubt 
arises, some sort of tentative solution. This is the predicate 
or idea. Just as the fact, or real in the narrower sense, is 
that which is taken as given in the situation, so the ideal 
is that which is taken as tentative. Its ideality does not 
consist in its reference to another order of existence, the 
objective world of meanings, but in its function within the 
judgment, the estimate of the whole situation as leading up 
to the adequate act. Just as we no longer have any need for 
the mediation of the real world as known to me between sub- 
ject and reality, so we no longer need the objective world of 
meanings to bridge the chasm between the predicate and 
reality. The difficulty of understanding how ideas can be 
used to build up facts disappears when we regard fact and 
idea, not as different orders of existence, but as contents 
marking different phases of a total function. 

i Or, the situation as questioned is itself a fact, and a perfectly determinate 
(though not determined) one. See pp. 38, 50. 



Bosanquet's Theory of Judgment 113 

Ideas, as Bosanquet represented them, proved to be 
extremely unsatisfactory tools to use in building up a knowl- 
edge of reality. In the first place, their value as instruments 
of thought depends upon their universality. We have 
already reviewed Bosanquet's difficulties in attempting to 
explain the universality of ideas. The universality of an idea 
cannot reside in its mere existence as image. Its existence 
is purely particular. Its universality must reside in its ref- 
erence to something outside of itself. But no explanation of 
how the particular existence — image — could refer to another 
and fuller content of a different order of existence could be 
discovered. The fact of reference remained an ultimate 
mystery. From the new point of view the image gains its 
universality through its organizing function. It represents 
an organized habit which may be brought to bear upon the 
present situation, and which serves, by directing action, to 
organize and unify experience as a whole. It is only as func- 
tion that the concept of reference can be made intelligible. 

Of course, considered as content, the idea is just as par- 
ticular from this point of view as from any other. We still 
have to discuss the question as to whether or not the particu- 
larity of the idea has a logical value. The fact that it had none 
in Bosanquet's theory sets a limit to the validity of thought. 
But if the real test of the validity of a judgment is the act 
in which it issues, then the existential aspect of the idea 
must have logical value. The existential aspect of the idea 
is the "my" side of it. It is as my personal experience that 
it exists. But it is only as my idea that it has any impulsive 
power, or can issue in action. Far from being ignored, 
therefore, the existential aspect is essential to the logical, 
the determinative, value of an idea. 

Ideas, according to the representational theory of knowl- 
edge, proved to be a poor medium for knowing reality in 
still another respect. They are in their very nature contents 



114 Studies in Logical Theory 

that have been reduced from the fulness of experience to 
mere index-signs. Even though their reference to a fuller 
content in the objective world of meanings presented no 
problem, still this objective world of meanings is far removed 
from reality. And yet, in order to know, we must be able 
to affirm ideas of reality. On the functional theory of ideas, 
their value does not rest at all upon their representational 
nature. They are not taken either in their existence or in 
their meaning as representations of any other content. They 
are taken as contents which mark a given function, and their 
value is determined entirely by the adequacy of the function 
of which they are the conscious expression. Their content 
may be as meager as you please. It may have been obtained 
by a long process of reducing and transforming sensory 
experience, but if it serve to enable its possessor to meet the 
situation which called it up with the appropriate act, then it 
has truth and value in the fullest sense. The reduction of 
the idea to a mere index-sign presents no problem when we 
realize that it is the tool of a given function, not the sign 
for a different and fuller content. The idea thus becomes a 
commendable economy in the thought-process, rather than a 
reprehensible departure from reality. 

We have already upon general considerations criticised 
the point of view which holds that ideality consists in refer- 
ence to another content. In arguing that this reference 
cannot be primarily to reality itself, but rather to an inter- 
mediate world of meanings, Bosanquet cites the question 
and the negative judgment. In the question ideas are not 
affirmed of reality, and in negation they are definitely denied 
of reality, hence their reference cannot be to reality. It must 
therefore be to an objective world of meanings. It may be 
worth while to point out in passing that, from the functional 
point of view, the part played by ideas in the question and 
in negative judgment is the same that it is in affirmation. 



Bosanquet's Theory of Judgment 115 

We have brought out the fact that all judgment arises in 
a doubt. The earliest stage of judgment is accordingly a 
question. Whether the process stops at that point, or is 
carried on to an affirmation or negation, depends upon the 
particular conditions. The ideas which appear in questions 
present no other problem than those of affirmation. They 
are ideas, not by virtue of their reference to another content 
in the world of meanings, but by virtue of their function, 
i. e., that of constituting that part of the total experience 
which is taken as doubtful, and hence as in process. 

In order to make this point clear with reference to nega- 
tive judgments, it will be necessary to consider the relation 
of negative and positive judgments somewhat more in detail. 
All judgment is in its earliest stages a question, but a ques- 
tion is never mere question. There are always present some 
suggestions of an answer, which make the process really a 
disjunctive judgment. A question might be denned as a 
disjunctive judgment in which one member of the disjunc- 
tion is expressed and the others implied. If the process 
goes on to take the form of affirmation or negation, one of 
the suggested answers is selected. To follow out the illus- 
tration of the bread used above, the judgment arises in a 
doubt as to the nature of the white object perceived, but the 
doubt never takes the form of a blank question. It at once 
suggests certain possible solutions drawn from the mass of 
organized experience at the command of the person judging. 
At this stage the judgment is disjunctive. In the illustra- 
tion it would probably take the form: "This is either bread 
or cake." The further course of the judgment rejects the 
cake alternative, and selects the bread, and the final outcome 
of the judgment is formulated in the proposition: "This is 
bread." But how did it happen that it did not take the 
form: "This is not cake"? That proposition is also involved 
in the outcome, and implied in the judgment made. The 



116 Studies in Logical Theory 

answer is that the form taken by the final outcome depends 
entirely on the direction of interest of the person making 
the judgment. If his interest happened to lie in obtaining 
bread, then the outcome would naturally take the form: 
"This is bread," and his act would consist in eating it. If 
he happened to want cake, the natural form would be, "This 
is not cake," and his act would consist in refraining from 
eating. In other words, the question as to whether a judg- 
ment turns out to be negative or positive is a question of 
whether the stress of interest happens to fall on the selected 
or on the rejected portions of the original disjunction. Every 
determination of a subject through a predicate includes both. 
The selection of one or the other according to interest affects 
the final formulation of the process, but does not change the 
relations of its various phases. An idea in a negative judg- 
ment is just what it is in a positive judgment. In neither case 
is it constituted an idea by reference to some other content. 

So far we have outlined Bosanquet's theory of the judg- 
ment ; have noted the apparently insoluble problems inherent 
in his system, and have sketched a radically different theory 
which offered a possible solution for his difficulties. It now 
remains to develop the implications of the new theory fur- 
ther by comparing its application to some of the more impor- 
tant problems of logic with that of Bosanquet. In closing 
we shall have to inquire to what extent the new theory of 
the judgment with its metaphysical implications has proved 
more satisfactory than that of Bosanquet. 

The special problems to be considered are (1) the rela- 
tion of judgment to inference ; (2) the parts of the judg- 
ment and their relationship; (3) the time element in the 
judgment; and (4) the way in which one judgment can be 
separated from another. 

1. The discussion of the relation between judgment and 
inference comes up incidentally in Bosanquet's treatment of 



Bosanquet's Theoky of Judgment 117 

the distinction between a judgment and a proposition (p. 79). 
The proposition, he says, is merely the enunciative sentence 
which represents the act of thought called judgment. With 
this distinction we should agree. In his discussion of the 
point, however, he criticises Hegel's doctrine that a judg- 
ment is distinguished from a proposition in that a judgment 
maintains itself against a doubt, while a proposition is a 
mere temporal affirmation, not implying the presence of a 
doubt. The ground of his criticism is that judgment must 
be regarded as operative before the existence of a conscious 
doubt, and that, while it is true, as Hegel suggests, that 
judgment and inference begin together, they both begin far- 
ther back than the point at which conscious doubt arises. 
Doubt marks the point at which inference becomes conscious 
of its ground. Now, it is undoubted that inferences in 
which the ground is implicit exist at an earlier stage of 
experience than those in which it is explicit. The former 
we usually call simple apprehension, and the latter judgment. 
What Bosanquet wishes to do is to make the term "judg- 
ment" cover both the implicit and the explicit activities. 
The question at once arises whether such a use of terms is 
accurate. There is certainly a wide difference between an 
inference which is conscious of its ground, and one which is 
not. It is conceivably a distinction of philosophic impor- 
tance. To slur the difference by applying one name to both 
accomplishes nothing. It will be remembered that the pres- 
ence of a conscious doubt is the criterion of judgment 
adopted in the standpoint from which we have been criticis- 
ing Bosanquet's theory. We should accordingly make the 
term "inference" a wider one than the term "judgment." 
A judgment is an inference which is conscious of its ground. 
Since fact and idea have been represented as constituted in 
and through judgment, the question which at once suggests 
itself is: What, from such a standpoint, is the criterion of 



118 Studies in Logical Theoey 

fact and idea in the stage of experience previous to the 
appearance of judgment? The answer is that the question 
involves the psychological fallacy. There is no such distinc- 
tion as fact and idea in experience previous to the appear- 
ance of judgment. The distinction between fact and idea 
arises only at the higher level of experience at which infer- 
ence becomes conscious of its grounds. To ask what they 
were previous to that is to ask what they were before they 
were — a question which, of course, cannot be answered. 

Our reason for not adopting Hegel's distinction between 
a judgment and a proposition would accordingly not be the 
same as Bosanquet's-. The question has already been 
touched upon in the distinction between dead and live judg- 
ments. What Hegel calls a proposition is really nothing 
but a dead judgment. His illustration of a temporal affirma- 
tion is the sentence: "A carriage is passing the house." 
That sentence would be a judgment, he says, only in case 
there were some doubt as to whether or not a carriage was 
passing. But the question to be answered first is: When 
would such a "statement" occur in the course of our expe- 
rience? It is impossible to conceive of any circumstances 
in which it would naturally occur, unless there were some 
doubt to be solved either of our own or of another. Per- 
haps one is expecting a friend, and does not know at first 
whether it is a carriage or a cart which is passing. Perhaps 
some one has been startled, and asks: "What is this 
noise?" What Hegel wishes to call a proposition is, accord- 
ingly, nothing but a judgment taken out of its setting. 

2. In dealing with the traditional three parts of the judg- 
ment — subject, predicate, and copula — Bosanquet disposes 
of the copula at once, by dividing the judgment into subject 
and predication. But the two terms "subject" and "predi- 
cation" are not co-ordinate. Subject, as he uses it, is a 
static term indicating a content. Predication is a dynamic 



Bosanquet's Theory of Judgment 119 

term indicating the act of predicating. It implies some- 
thing which is predicated of something else, i. e., two con- 
tents and the act of bringing them into relation. Now, if 
what we understand by the copula is the act of predicating 
abstracted from the content which is predicated of another 
content, then it does not dispose of the copula as a separate 
factor in judgment to include thing predicated and act of 
predicating under the single term "predication." The term 
"predication" might just as reasonably be made to absorb 
the subject as well, and would then appear — as it really is 
— synonymous with the term "judgment." 

But Bosanquet's difficulties with the parts of the judg- 
ment are not disposed of even by the reduction to subject 
and predication. He goes on to say: 

It is plain that the judgment, however complex, is a single idea. 
The relations within it are not relations between ideas, but are 
themselves a part of the idea which is predicated. In other words, 
the subject must be outside the judgment in order that the content 
of the judgment may be predicated of it. If not, we fall back into 
" my idea of the earth goes round my idea of the sun," and this, as 
we have seen, is never the meaning of " The earth goes round the 
sun." What we want is, " The real world has in it as a fact what 
I mean by earth-going-round-sun." (P 81.) 

We have already pointed out the difficulties into which 
Bosanquet's presupposition as to the nature of reality 
plunges him. This is but another technical statement of 
the same problem. If the subject is really outside of judg- 
ment, then the entire content of the judgment must fall on 
the side of predicate, or idea. In the paragraphs that fol- 
low, Bosanquet brings out the point that the judgment must 
nevertheless contain the distinction of subject and predi- 
cate, since it is impossible to affirm without introducing a 
distinction into the content of the affirmation. Yet he con- 
siders this distinction to be merely a difference within an 
identity. It serves to mark off the grammatical subject 



120 Studies in Logical Theoey 

and predicate, but cannot be the essential distinction of 
subject and predicate. His solution of the puzzle is really 
the one for which we have been contending, i. e., that "the 
real world is primarily and emphatically my world," but he 
still cannot be satisfied with that kind of a real world as 
ultimate. Behind the subject which presents my world he 
postulates a real world which is not my world, but which my 
world represents. It is the relation between this real world 
and the total content of a judgment which he considers the 
essential relation of judgment. This leaves him — as we 
have pointed out — as far as ever from a theory of the rela- 
tion of thought to reality, and, moreover, with no criterion 
for the distinction of subject and predicate within the judg- 
ment. To say that it is a difference within an identity does 
not explain how, on a mere basis of content, such a difference 
is distinguished within an identity or how it assumes the 
importance it actually has. He vibrates between taking the 
whole intellectual content as predicate, the reality to be rep- 
resented as subject (in which case the copula would be the 
"contact of sense-perception") and a distinction appearing 
without reasonable ground or bearing within the intellectual 
content. When subject and predicate are regarded as the 
contents in which phases of a function appear, this difficulty 
no longer exists. 

3. In discussing the time relations within judgment (p. 85) 
Bosanquet first disposes of the view which holds that the sub- 
ject is prior to the predicate in time, and is distinguished from 
the predicate by its priority. He emphasizes the fact that no 
content of consciousness can have the significance of a sub- 
ject, except with reference to something already referred to 
it as predicate. But while it cannot be true that the parts 
of the judgment fall outside of one another in time, it is yet 
evident that in one sense at least the judgment is in time. 
To make this clear, Bosanquet draws a provisional distinc- 



Bosanquet's Theory of Judgment 121 

tion between the process of arriving at a judgment and the 
completed judgment. The process of arriving at a judg- 
ment is a process of passing from a subject with an indefinite 
provisional predicate — a sort of disjunctive judgment — to 
a subject with a denned predicate. This process is evidently 
in time, but it is as evidently not a transition from subject 
to predicate. It is, as he says, a modification, pari passu, 
of both subject and predicate. The same distinction, he 
thinks, must hold of the judgment when completed. But this 
throws us into a dilemma with reference to the time-factor 
in judgment. Time either is or is not an essential factor in 
judgment. If it is not essential, then how explain the evi- 
dent fact that the judgment as an intellectual process does 
have duration ? If it is essential, then how explain the fact 
that its parts do not fall outside one another in time ? Bosan- 
quet evidently regards the former problem as the easier of 
the two. His solution is that, while the judgment is an 
intellectual process in time, still this is a purely external 
aspect. The essential relation between subject and predicate 
is not in time, since they are coexistent ; therefore time is not 
an essential element in judgment. 

The first point at which we take issue with this treatment 
of time in relation to judgment is in the distinction between 
the process of arriving at the judgment and the completed 
judgment. Bosanquet himself defines judgment as an intel- 
lectual act by which an ideal content is referred to reality. 
Now, at what point does this act begin? Certainly at the 
point where an ideal content is first applying to reality, and 
this, as he points out, is at the beginning of the process 
which he describes as the process of arriving at a judgment. 
It is nothing to the point that at this stage the predicate is 
tentative, while later it becomes defined. His process of 
arriving at the judgment is exactly the process we have 
been describing as the early stages of any and every judg- 



122 Studies in Logical Theoey 

ment. When he talks about the judgment as completed, he 
has apparently shifted from the dynamic view of judgment 
implied in his definition to a static view. All he could mean 
by a completed judgment — in distinction to the total activity 
of arriving at a judgment — is the new content of which we 
find ourselves possessed when the total process of predication 
is complete. But this content is not a judgment at all. It 
is a new construction of reality which may serve either as 
subject or as predicate in future judgments. 

Now, if we regard the judgment as the total activity by 
which an ideal content is referred to reality, then must we 
not regard time as an essential element ? Bosanquet answers 
this question in the negative, because he believes that if 
time is an essential element, then the parts of the judgment 
must necessarily fall outside one another in time. But is 
this necessary? If the essence of judgment is the very 
modification, pari passu, of subject and predicate, then 
time must be an essential element in it, but it is not at all 
necessary that its elements should fall outside of one another 
in time. In other words, the dilemma which Bosanquet points 
out on p. 87 is not a genuine one. There is no difficulty 
involved in admitting that the judgment is a transition in 
time, and still holding that its parts do not fall outside one 
another in time. His own solution of the problem — i. e., that, 
although judgment is an intellectual process in time, still time 
is not an essential feature of it, because subject and predicate 
are coexistent and judgment is a relation between them — 
involves a desertion of his dynamic view of judgment. He 
defines judgment, not as a relation between subject and 
predicate, but as an intellectual act 1 

i Of course, the distinction between the process of arriving as temporal, and the 
essential relation of subject and predicate as eternal, harks back to the notion of 
judgment as the process by which " we " reproduce, or make real for ourselves, a 
reality already real within itself. And it involves just the same difficulties. The 
relation of subject and predicate — this simultaneous distinction and mutual 
reference — has meaning only in an act of adjustment, of attempt to control, within 



Bosanquet's Theory of Judgment 123 

4. The discussion of the time-element in judgment leads 
up to the next puzzle — that as to the way in which one 
judgment can be marked off from another in the total activity 
of thought. Bosanquet has pointed out that subject and pred- 
icate are both of them present at every stage of the judging 
process, and are undergoing progressive modification. If, 
therefore, we take a cross-section of the process at any point, 
we find both subject and predicate present; but a cross- 
section at one point would not reveal quite the same subject 
and predicate as the cross-section at another point. He comes 
to the conclusion that judgment breaks up into judgments as 
rhomboidal spar into rhomboids (p. 88). It is, accordingly, 
quite arbitrary to mark out any limits for a single judgment. 
The illustration he gives of the point is as follows: 

Take such an every-day judgment of mixed perception and 
inference as, "He is coming down stairs and going into the 
street." It is the merest chance whether I break up the process 
thus, into two judgments as united by a mere conjunction, or, 
knowing the man's habits, say, when I hear him half way down 
stairs, " He is going out." In the latter case I summarize a more 
various set of observations and inferences in a single judgment ; but 
the judgment is as truly single as each of the two which were before 
separated by a conjunction; for each of them was also a summary 
of a set of perceptions, which might, had I chosen, have been sub- 
divided into distinct propositions expressing separate judgments; 
e. g., " He has opened his door, and is going toward the staircase, 

which we distribute our conditions. When the act is completed, the relation 
of subject and predicate, as subject and predicate, quite disappears. An eternal 
relation of the two is meaningless ; we might as well talk of an eternal reaching 
for the same distant object by the same hand. In such conceptions, we have only 
grasped a momentary phase of a situation, isolated it, and set it up as an entity. Sig- 
nificant results would be reached by considering the "synthetic" character (in the 
Kantian sense) of judgment from this point of view. All modern logicians agree that 
judgment must be ampliative, must extend knowledge ; that a " trifling proposition " 
is no judgment at all. What does this mean save that judgment is developmental, 
transitive, in effect and purport? And yet these same writers conceive of Reality as 
a. finished system of content in a complete and unchangeable single Judgment! It is 
impossible to evade the contradiction save by recognizing that since it is the busi- 
ness of judgment to transform, its test (or Truth) is successful performance of the 
particular transformation it has set itself, and that transformation is temporal. 



124 Studies in Logical Theory 

and is half way down, and is in the passage," etc. If I simply say, 
" He is going out," I am not a whit the less conscious that I judge 
all these different relations, but I then include them all in a single 
systematic content " going out." (P. 89.) 

But is it a question of merest chance which of these 
various possibilities is actualized? Is Bosanquet really 
looking — as he thinks — at the actual life of thought, or is he 
considering, not what as a matter of fact does take place under 
a concrete set of circumstances, but what might take place 
under slightly differing sets of circumstances ? If it is true 
that judgment is a crisis developing through adequate inter- 
action of stimulus and response into a definite situation, 
beginning with doubt and ending with a solution of the 
doubt, then it is not true that its limits are purely arbitrary. 
It begins with the appearance of the problem and its tenta- 
tive solutions, and ends with the solution of a final response. 
It does, of course, depend upon momentary interest, but this 
does not make its limits arbitrary, for the interest is inherent, 
not external. In the case of Bosanquet' s illustration, the 
question of whether one judgment or half a dozen is made 
is not a question of merest chance. It depends upon where 
the interest of the person making the judgment is centered 
— in other words, upon what is the particular doubt to be 
solved. If the real doubt is as to whether the man will stay in 
his room or go out, then when he is heard leaving his room 
the solution comes in the form: "He is going out." But if 
the doubt is as to whether he will stay in his room, go out, or 
go into some other room, then the succession of judgments 
occurs, each of which solves a problem. "He has opened 
his door" — then he is not going to stay in his room; "He 
is going toward the staircase" — then he is not going into a 
room in the opposite direction, etc. It is impossible to con- 
ceive of such a series of judgments as actually being made, 
unless each one represents a problematic situation and its 



Bosanquet's Theory of Judgment 125 

determination. The only time that a man would, as a mat- 
ter of fact, choose to break up the judgment, "He is going 
out," into such a series, would be the time when each mem- 
ber of the series had its own special interest as representing 
a specific uncertain aim or problem. Nor is it altogether 
true that in making the judgment, "He is going out," one is 
not a whit the less conscious that he judges all these different 
relations. He judges only such relations as are necessary to 
the solution of the problem in hand. If hearing the man 
open his door is a sufficient basis for the solution, then that 
is the only one which consciously enters into the formation 
of the judgment. 

We have attempted to bring out in the preceding pages 
what seem to be the contradictions and insoluble problems 
involved in Bosanquet's theory of the judgment, and to 
exhibit them as the logical outcome of his metaphysical pre- 
suppositions. We have also tried to develop another theory 
of the judgment involving a different view of the nature of 
reality, and to show that the new theory is able to avoid 
the difficulties inherent in Bosanquet's system. The change 
in view-point briefly is this : Instead of regarding the real 
world as self-existent, independently of the judgments we 
make about it, we viewed it as the totality of experience 
which is assured, i. e., determined as to certainty or specific 
availability, through the instrumentality of judgment. We 
thus avoided the essentially insoluble problem of how a 
real world whose content is self-existent quite outside of 
knowledge can ever be correctly represented by ideas. The 
difficulty in understanding the relation of the subject and 
the predicate of judgment to reality disappears when we 
cease to regard reality as self-existent outside of knowledge. 
Subject and predicate become instrumentalities in the pro- 
cess of building up reality. Thought no longer seems to 
carry us farther and farther from reality as ideas become 



126 Studies in Logical Theory 

abstract and recede from the immediate sensory experience 
in which contact with the real occurs. On the contrary, 
thought carries us constantly toward reality. Finally, we 
avoid the fundamental skepticism about the possibility of 
knowledge which, from the other standpoint, is forced upon 
us by the long succession of facts which have faded into the 
realm of false opinions, and the lack of any guarantee that 
our present so-called knowledge of reality shall not meet the 
same fate. From that point of view, reality seems to be not 
only unknown, but unknowable. 

The criticism sure to be passed upon the alternative view 
developed is that the solution of Bosanquet's problems 
which it affords is not a real solution, but rather the aban- 
donment of an attempt at a solution. It represents reality 
as a thing which is itself in process of development. It 
would force us to admit that the reality of a hundred years 
ago, or even of yesterday, was not in content the reality of 
today. A growing, developing reality is, it will be said, 
an imperfect reality, while we must conceive of reality as 
complete and perfect in itself. The only answer which can 
be made is to insist again that we have no right to assume 
that reality is such an already completed existence, unless 
such an assumption enables us to understand experience and 
organize it into a consistent whole. The attempt of this 
paper has been to show that such a conception of reality 
really makes it inherently impossible to give an intelligible 
account of experience as a whole, while the view which 
regards reality as developing in and through judgment does 
enable us to build up a consistent and understandable view 
of the world. This suggests that the "perfect" may not 
after all be that which is finished and ended, but that whose 
reality is so abundant and vital as to issue in continuous 
self -modification. The Reality that evolves and moves may 
be more perfect, less finite, than that which has exhausted 



Bosanquet's Theoey op Judgment 127 

itself. Moreover, only the view that Reality is develop- 
mental in quality, and that the instrument of its develop- 
ment is judgment involving the psychical in its determina- 
tion of subject and predicate gives the psychical as such any 
significant place in knowledge or in reality. According to 
the view of knowledge as representation of an eternal con- 
tent, the psychical is a mere logical surd. 



TYPICAL STAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF JUDGMENT 

Logic aims at investigating the general function of 
knowing. But knowing, it is commonly asserted, is consti- 
tuted as judgment. Furthermore, there is reason to believe 
that judgment undergoes well-marked changes in its devel- 
opment. Consequently, an understanding of the judgment- 
function and of its epochs in development is of prime impor- 
tance. In carrying through the investigation we shall 
endeavor, first, to state and to defend a certain presupposition 
with reference to the character of the judgment-function; 
second, to exhibit the application of this presupposition in 
the typical stages of judgment. 



Judgment is essentially instrumental. This is the pre- 
supposition which we must explain and make good. And 
we shall accomplish this by way of an analysis of judgment 
as meaning. 

It cannot be denied that what we call knowledge is con- 
cerned with the discrimination of valid meaning. To know 
is to appreciate the meaning of things and the meaning of 
things is the same with valid meaning. Judging determines 
knowledge, and in the same act develops meaning. To put 
it otherwise, knowledge is a matter of content; content is 
meaning, and we have knowledge when we have meaning 
satisfactorily determined. It is evident, therefore, that if 
we would understand the judging-function, we must first 
make clear to ourselves the nature and role of meaning. 

Meaning is universally embodied in ideas. To know, to 

128 



Stages in Development of Judgment 129 

understand the meaning, to get ideas, are the same. Now, 
in ideas two factors may be distinguished. First, every 
idea has as its base an image or emphasized portion of 
experience. In some forms of ideation we are more immedi- 
ately aware of the presence of images than in others, but no 
idea — even the most abstract — can exist apart from -an 
ultimate base. Second, every idea is equally a function of 
reference and control. As reference, the idea projects in the 
mind's view an anticipation of experiences and of the condi- 
tions upon which these experiences depend for their realiza- 
tion; as control, ideas are agencies in turning anticipations 
into realizations. 1 

To be more specific on both points: Since the days of 
Galton it has been almost a commonplace in psychology that 
ideas are embodied in forms of imagery which vary for and 
in different individuals. It has been maintained, it is true, 
that in abstract forms of thought, imagery disappears. This 
objection is met in two ways. For one, words — the vehicle 
of many abstract ideas — involve imagery of a most pro- 
nounced type: for another, every idea, when examined 
closely, discloses an image, no matter how much for the time 
being this has been driven into obscurity by the character- 
istics of reference and control. Furthermore, when we 
examine the anticipatory aspect of ideas, the presence of 
imagery both with reference to outcome and to conditions is 
so evident that its presence will scarcely be denied. 

The second point may be illustrated in several ways. In 
everyday life anticipation and realization are inseparable 
from the nature and use of ideas. "Hat" means anticipa- 
tion of protection to the head and the tendency toward set- 
ting in motion the conditions appropriate to the realization 

lit is worth considering whether this may not be the reality of Royce's distinc- 
tion between outer and inner meaning. An anticipation of experience is the working 
prerequisite of the control which will realize the idea, i. e., the experience antici- 
pated. One is no more " inner " or " outer " than the other. 



130 Studies in Logical Theory 

of this anticipation. The same factors are evident in the 
boy's definition of a knife as "something to whittle with." 
Again it is maintained that intelligence is an essential factor 
in human self -consciousness. By this is meant that human 
beings are universally aware in some degree of what they 
are about. And this awareness consists in understanding 
the meaning of their actions, of forecasting the outcome of 
various kinds of activity, of apprehending beforehand the 
conditions connected with determinate results. Within this 
sphere we speak of certain men as being pre-eminently 
intelligent, meaning that for such men outcomes are pre- 
viewed and connected with their appropriate conditions far 
beyond the range of ordinary foresight. Finally, scientific 
intelligence is essentially of this kind. It aims at under- 
standing the varying types of process which operate in 
nature and thus at possessing itself of information with 
reference to results to be expected under determinate con- 
ditions. For example, the knowledge acquired in his 
researches by Louis Pasteur enabled him to predict the life 
or death of animals inoculated with charbon virus according 
as they had or had not been vaccinated previously. His 
information, in other words, became an instrument for the 
control and eradication of the disease. And what is true of 
this case is true of all science. To the scientist ideas are 
"working hypotheses" and have their value only as they 
enable him to predict, and to control. And while it is true 
that the scientist usually overlooks the so-called practical 
value of his discoveries, it is none the less true that in due 
time the inventor follows the investigator. The investigator 
is content to construct and show the truth of his idea. 
The inventor assumes the truth of the investigator's work 
and carries his idea as a constructive principle into the 
complications of life. To both men " knowledge is power," 
although the "power" may be realized in connection with 



Stages in Development of Judgment 131 

different interests. But if this be true, ideas can no longer 
be regarded as copies in individual experience of some pre- 
existing reality. They are rather instruments for transform- 
ing and directing experience, by way of constructing antici- 
pations and the conditions appropriate to their realization. 
Herein also consists their truth or falsity. The true idea is 
reliable, carrying us from anticipation to realization; the 
false idea is unreliable, and fails in bringing the promised 
result. 

Now, in the development of instruments generally, we 
may distinguish a rule-of-thumb or more or less unrenective 
stage of construction, and one entirely reflective. As to use 
there is the distinction of inexpert and expert control. This 
leads us to expect that in the thought-function also certain 
typical stages of construction and of control may be found. 
To the investigation of this point we shall next direct atten- 
tion. 

II 

In its development from crude to expert forms judgment 
exhibits three typical stages — the impersonal, the reflective, 
and the intuitive. These we shall consider in order of 
development. But first it is to be noticed that these stages 
of judgment are not to be regarded as hard and fast distinc- 
tions of the kind that no indications of the higher are to be 
found in the lower types, but rather as working distinctions 
within a process of continuous development. 

1. The impersonal judgment. — Ever since the days of the 
Greek grammarians the impersonal judgment has been con- 
sidered an anomaly in logic. And the reason is not far to 
seek. From the time of Aristotle it has been customary to 
maintain that judgments, when analyzed, disclose a subject 
and a predicate. Logically considered, these appear to be 
entirely correlative, for, as Erdmann puts it, 1 "an event 

* Logik, p. 304. 



132 Studies in Logical Theoby 

without a substrate, a quality without a subject, is altogether 
unpresentable." But there is in all languages a class of 
judgments, such as, "It rains," " It snows," "Fire!" in which 
no directly asserted subject is discoverable. To these the 
name impersonal and subjectless has been given. Here then 
is the difficulty. If we admit that the impersonal expression 
involves predication, we must, in all consistency, search for 
a subject, while at the same time the subject refuses to dis- 
close itself. In ancient days the orthodox logician confined 
his search to language and to the spoken or written proposi- 
tion. The unorthodox critic maintained, in opposition to 
this, that a subject was provided only by warping and twist- 
ing the natural sense of the impersonal expression. And 
thus the matter stood until the development of modern com- 
parative philology. It was then demonstrated beyond the 
possibility of doubt that the "it" (or its equivalent) of the 
impersonal is a purely contentless form word. Language 
provides no subject whatsoever. So strong, however, is the 
hold of tradition that the search has been renewed. Atten- 
tion has been turned upon the mental processes involved, 
and this time with more apparent result. Although there 
has been no general agreement with reference to the subject, 
a classification of the different views may still be made, 
(a) The subject is universal and undetermined; (6) it is 
individual and more or less determined; (c) between these 
extremes lies almost every intermediate degree conceivable. 
Ueberweg maintains that the subject of the impersonal 
is the actual totality of present experience. When we ask, 
"What rains ?" we must understand a reference to our general 
environment, in which no special element is singled out. 
Sigwart, on the other hand, maintains that the subject can 
be construed only as the actual sense-impression. This 
diversity of opinion might seem to indicate that, were it not 
for the constraining power of theory, a subject would scarcely 



Stages in Development of Judgment 133 

be thought of for the impersonal. Still it must be admitted 
that when we examine the impersonal expression closely we 
can discover a sense-impression, whether definite or indefi- 
nite, combined with an idea. This would seem to give the 
case to the orthodox logician, for he will at once claim the 
sense-impression as the subject and the idea as the predicate 
of the judgment. But we must have a care. Predication is 
usually held to consist in a reference of predicate to subject. 
The factors of the judgment are, as it were, held apart. In 
the impersonal no such thing as this can be discovered. The 
meaning is so close a unity that impression and idea are 
entirely fused. We may analyze the expression and find 
them there, but by so doing we destroy the immediacy which 
is an essential characteristic of the impersonal. In other 
words, the impersonal does not analyze itself. It is entirely 
unconscious of its make-up. And yet it is definite and 
applies itself with precision: If I am in a lecture-hall and 
hear the fire-alarm, the thought "Fire!" which enters my 
mind leads to an immediate change in my conduct. I arise, 
move quietly out, and prepare for duty. If, on the other 
hand, I open the street door and the rain strikes my face, I 
ejaculate "Raining!" turn, reach for my umbrella, and pass 
out protected. In both cases I act knowingly and with 
meaning, but I do not analyze the movement either of thought 
or of action. A correlate to the unreflective impersonal judg- 
ment is found in early custom. Custom embodies social 
ideas and is an instrument for the determination and control 
of action. Individuals moved by custom know what they 
are about and act with precision according as custom may 
demand. But it is notorious that custom is direct and unre- 
flective. It represents social instruments of control which 
have grown up without method and which represent the 
slow accretion of rule-of-thumb activities through many 
ages. So in the impersonal judgment we have a type of 



134 Studies in Logical Theory 

intellectual instrument which has been brought to a high 
degree of precision in use, but which still retains the sim- 
plicity and certainty of an unquestioned instrument of action. 
For this reason, whatever complexity of elements the imper- 
sonal may present to a reflective view, it does not contain to 
itself. Consequently it may be best to say that to the imper- 
sonal there is neither subject, predicate, nor reference of the 
one to the other. These are distinctions which arise only 
when the instrument of action has been questioned and the 
mind turns back upon the meaning which it has unhesita- 
tingly used, analyzing, investigating, constructing, laying 
bare the method and function of its tools. Thus arises a 
new and distinctive type of judgment, viz., the reflective. 

2. The reflective judgment. — By the reflective judgment 
is to be understood that form of meaning whose structure 
and function have become a problem to itself. The days of 
naive trust and spontaneous action have gone by. Inquiry, 
criticism, aloofness, stay the tendency to immediate action. 
Meaning has grown worldly wise and demands that each 
situation shall explain itself and that the general principles 
and concrete applications of its own instruments shall be 
made manifest. Hence in the various forms of reflective 
thought we find the progressive steps in which meaning 
comes to full consciousness of its function in experience. 

The demonstrative judgment (the simplest of the reflective 
type) carries doubt, criticism, construction, and assertion 
written on the face of it. For example, in the expression, 
" That is hot," we do not find the directness and immediacy 
of response characteristic of the simpler impersonal "hot." 
Instead, we note a clash of tendencies, a suspension of the 
proposed action, a demand for and a carrying out of a recon- 
sideration of the course of action, the emergence of a new 
meaning, and the consequent redirection of activities. An 
iron lies upon the hearth ; I stretch out my hand to return it 



Stages in Development of Judgment 135 

to its place; I stop suddenly, having become conscious of 
signs of warmth ; the thought arises in my mind, " That is 
hot;" I experiment and find my judgment correct; I search 
for a cloth, and thus protected carry out my first intention. 
Again, a hunter notes a movement in the thicket, quickly 
raises his gun, and is about to fire. Something in the 
movement of the object arrests him. He stops, thinking, 
i 'That is a man, perhaps." What has caught the eye has 
arrested his action, has become a demand, and not until 
the situation has become clear can the hunter determine 
what to do. In other words, he must reflectively assure 
himself what the object is before he can satisfy himself as to 
how he should act. Subject and predicate have arisen and 
have consciously played their parts in the passage from 
doubt to decision. 

Under the heading "individual judgments" are classed 
such expressions as, "That ship is a man-o'-war," "Russia 
opposes the policy of the open door in China." In both 
these cases it is evident that an advance in definiteness of 
conception and of complexity of meaning has been made, 
while at the same time we recognize that the instrumental 
characteristics of the thought-movement remain the same. 
In considering the subject of the judgment we note that the 
stimulus presents itself partly as a determinate factor and 
partly as a problem — an insistent demand. The expression, 
" That ship is a man-o'-war," might be written, " That is a 
ship and of the kind man-o'-war," and it thus constitutes 
what Sigwart calls a " double synthesis." As used in actual 
judgment, however, the two are held together and constitute 
the statement of a single stimulus of which a certain portion 
is evident and a certain portion is in doubt. The working 
out of the difficulty is given in the predicate " is a man-o'- 
war," in which we at once detect the instrumental character- 
istics fundamental to all judgment. To illustrate: At the 



136 Studies in Logical Theory 

close of the battle of Santiago, in the Spanish- American 
war, smoke appeared upon the horizon revealing the presence 
of a strange ship. Instantly attention was directed to it, 
and it became a problem for action — a demand for instru- 
mental information. Soon it was identified as a man-o'-war, 
and the American ships were cleared for action. Closer 
approach raised a further question with reference to its 
nationality. After some debate this also was resolved, and 
hostile demonstrations were abandoned. 

The universal judgment is sometimes said to exhibit two 
distinct forms. Investigation, however, has proved this 
statement to be incorrect. Instances taken in themselves 
and apart from their character are of no logical significance. 
Advance is made by weighing instances and not by counting 
them. In short, the true universal is the hypothetical judg- 
ment, and the reason for this may be readily shown. The 
hypothetical judgment is essentially double-ended. On the 
one hand, it is a statement of the problem of action in terms 
of the conditions which will turn the problem into a solution. 
On the other hand, it is an assertion that once the conditions 
of action have been determined the result desired may be 
attained. Here we note that the judgment has come to clear 
consciousness of itself and of the part which it plays in 
experience. It has now obtained an insight into the crite- 
rion of its legitimate employment, i. e., of its truth and 
falsity. And this insight makes the justification of its claim 
almost self-evident. For, inasmuch as the hypothetical judg- 
ment says, " If such and such conditions be realized, such 
and such a result will be obtained," the test of the claim is 
made by putting the conditions into effect and watching 
whether the promised experience is given. And further, 
since it has been found that the judgment formulated as a 
hypothesis actually accomplishes what it promises, we must 
admit that the hypothetical judgment is also categorical. 



Stages in Development of Judgment 137 

These two factors cannot be separated from each other. It 
is true that the hypothetical judgment reduces every valid 
meaning to the form, "If certain conditions be realized,' 1 
but it as plainly and positively asserts, " such and such 
results will be obtained." When we grasp the absolute cor- 
relativity of the hypothetical and categorical aspects of 
judgment, we realize at once the essentially instrumental 
character of judgment, when it comes to consciousness of its 
structure and function. It arises in the self-conscious reali- 
zation of a problem. This it reflects upon and sizes up. 
When the difficulty has been apprehended, the judgment 
emerges as the consciousness of the conditions which will 
attain the desired end of action freed and unimpeded. This 
may be illustrated by reference to the work of Pasteur cited 
above. His investigations began in a problem set for him 
by agricultural conditions in France. A certain disease had 
made the profitable rearing of sheep and cattle almost an 
impossibility. After long and careful examination he dis- 
covered the beneficial effects of vaccination. To him the 
conditions which governed the presence of the disease became 
apparent, and this knowledge furnished him with an instru- 
ment by means of which one difficulty was removed from the 
path of the stock-raiser. In this illustration we have an 
epitome of the work accomplished everywhere by the scien- 
tist. It is his task to develop and to reduce to exact terms 
instruments of control for the varied activities of life. In 
its parts and as a whole each instrument is intelligently con- 
structed and tested so that its make-up and function are exactly 
known. Because of this, reasoned belief now takes the place 
of unreflective trust as that was experienced in the impersonal 
stage of judgment. What at first hand might appear to be 
a loss was in reality a gain ; the breakdown of the impersonal 
was the first step in the development of an instrument of 
action conscious of its reason for being, its methods and 



138 Studies in Logical Theory 

conditions of action. These latter constitute the distinctive 
subject and predicate of the reflective judgment. 

This brings us to the connection between the hypotheti- 
cal character of this form of judgment and its universality. 
And this perhaps will now be quite apparent. The reflect- 
ive judgment lays bare an objective connection between the 
conditions and outcomes of actions. It proves its point by 
actually constructing the event. Such being the case, uni- 
versality is no more than a statement of identical results 
being predictable wherever like conditions are realized. If 
it be true that "man is mortal," then it is an identical state- 
ment to insist that, "Wherever we find men there we shall 
also find mortality." 

And this point brings us naturally to the treatment of 
the disjunctive judgment: "A is either B or C or D." In the 
disjunctive judgment the demand is not for the construction 
of a reliable instrument of action, but for the resolution of a 
doubt as to which instrument is precisely fitted to the cir- 
cumstances. In fact, the disjunctive judgment involves the 
identification of the practical problem. When we say of a 
man, "He is either very simple or very deep," we have no 
doubt as to our proper course of action in either case. If he 
is simple, then we shall do so and so; if he is deep, then 
another course of action follows. We can lay out alternative 
courses beforehand, but the point of difficulty lies here: "But 
just which is he?" In short, the disjunctive judgment is 
the demand for and the attempt at a precise diagnosis of a 
concrete problem. To illustrate: A patient afflicted with 
aphasia is brought to a physician. The fact that the trouble 
is aphasia may be quite evident. But what precisely is the 
form and seat of the aphasia ? To the mind of the educated 
physician the problem will take on the disjunctive form: 
" This is either subcortical or cortical aphasia. If subcor- 
tical, intelligence will not be impaired ; if cortical, the sensor 



Stages in Development of Judgment 139 

and motor tracts will be in good condition." Appropriate 
tests are made and the subcortical possibilities are shut out. 
The disjunction disappears and the judgment emerges: "This 
is a case of cortical aphasia. But now a new disjunction 
arises. It is either the sensory or motor form of cortical 
aphasia, and, whichever one of these, it is again one of several 
possibilities. As the alternatives arise, the means for dis- 
criminating them arise also; determinate symptoms are 
observed, and in due time the physician arrives at the final 
conclusion: "This is sensory cortical aphasia of the visual 
type." Having determined this, his method of action is 
assured, and he proceeds to the appropriate operation. Thus, 
finally, we are brought to a form of judgment aware not 
only of its motive, method, and justification, but also to one 
aware of its specific application to individual cases. Thus it 
would seem as though judgment had returned upon itself 
and had completed the determination of its sphere of action. 
And in one sense this is true. In the disjunctive judgment, 
as inclusive of the motives of the hypothetical and categori- 
cal forms, the reflective judgment would appear to have come 
to its limit of development. One thing, however, remains 
to be considered, viz., the development from crude to expert 
uses of intellectual instruments. 

3. The intuitive judgment. — As stated above, the intuitive 
type of judgment depends upon efficiency in the use of judg- 
ment. In this regard there is a great similarity between 
the impersonal and the intuitive judgments. Both are 
immediate and precise. But there is a radical and essential 
difference. The impersonal judgment knows nothing of the 
strict analysis, insight, and constructive power of the reflect- 
ive judgment. The intuitive judgment, on the other hand, 
includes the results of reflection and brings them to their 
highest power. Paradoxically put, in the intuitive judg- 
ment there is so much reflection that there is no need for 



140 Studies in Logical Theory 

it at all. To the intuitive judgment there is no hesitation, 
no aloofness. Action is direct, but entirely self-conscious. 
That such a type of judgment as the intuitive exists there 
can be no doubt. There is all the difference in the world 
between the quality of consciousness of a mere layman and 
that of an expert, no matter what the line. The layman 
must size up a situation. It is a process whose parts are 
successive, whether much or little difficulty be experienced. 
For the expert situations are taken in at a glance, parts and 
whole are simultaneous and immediate. Yet the meaning is 
entirely exact. The expert judgment is self-conscious to the 
last degree. While other individuals are thinking out what 
to do, the expert has it, sees the advantage, adjusts, and 
moves. Demand and solution jump together. How other- 
wise can we explain, for example, the action of an expert 
ball-player? Witness his rapid reactions, his instantaneous 
adjustments. Mistakes of opponents which would never be 
noticed by the average player are recognized and seized 
upon. On the instant the new opening is seen, the adjust- 
ment is evident, the movement made. Illustrations to the 
same effect could be drawn from other modes of life, e. g., 
music, the military life, etc. That intuitive judgments are 
not more common is a proof in itself of their distinctive 
character and value. Only in so far as we become experts 
in our special fields of experience and have reduced our 
instruments of action to precise control, can we expect the 
presence of intuitive judgments. They remain, therefore, as 
the final outcome of the judgment-function made perfect in 
its technique and use. 

In conclusion we shall make a brief summary of our 
investigation and a criticism of certain current theories of 
judgment. 

Judgment is essentially instrumental. Its function is to 
construct, justify, and refine experience into exact instruments 



Stages in Development of Judgment 141 

for the direction and control of future experience through 
action. It exhibits itself first in the form of instruments 
developed unsystematically in response to the hard neces- 
sities of life. In a higher stage of development the instru- 
mental process itself is taken into account, and systematically 
developed until in the methodical procedure of science the 
general principles of knowledge are laid bare and efficient 
instruments of action constructed. Finally, constant, intel- 
ligent use results in complete control, so that within certain 
spheres doubt and hesitancy would seem to disappear as 
to the character of the tools used, and remain only as a 
moment in determining their wisest or most appropriate 
employ. 

The criticism indicated is based upon the instrumental 
character of judgment and is directed against all theories 
which contend that knowledge is a "copying" or "reprodu- 
cing" of reality. In whatever form this "copy" theory be 
stated, the question inevitably arises how we can compare 
our ideas with reality and thus know their truth. On this 
theory, what we possess is ever the copy; the reality is 
beyond. In other words, such a theory logically carried 
out leads to the breakdown of knowledge. Only a theory 
which contains and constructs its criterion within its own 
specific movement can verify its constructions. Such a 
theory is the instrumental. Judgment constructs a situation 
in consciousness. The values assigned in this situation have 
a determining influence upon values further appreciated. 
The construction arrived at concerns future weal and woe. 
Thus gradually a sense of truth and falsity attaches to the 
construing of situations. One sees that he must look beyond 
this situation, because the way he estimates this situation is 
fraught with meaning beyond itself. Hence the critically 
reflective judgment in which hesitancy and doubt direct 
themselves at the attitude, elements, and tools involved in 



142 Studies in Logical Theory 

defining and identifying the situation, instead of at the situa- 
tion itself in toto. Instead of developing a complex of 
experience through assigning qualities and meanings to the 
situation as such, some one of the quales is selected, to have 
its significance determined. It becomes, pro tempore, the 
situation judged. Or the same thing takes place as regards 
some "idea" or value hitherto immediately fastened upon 
and employed. In either case we get the reflective judg- 
ment, the judgment of pure relationship as distinct from 
the constructive judgment. But the judgment of relation, 
employing the copula to refer a specified predicate to a speci- 
fied object, is after all only for the sake of controlling some 
immediate judgment of constructive experience. It realizes 
itself in forming the confident habit of prompt and precise 
mental adjustment to individualized situations. 



VII 

THE NATURE OF HYPOTHESIS 

In the various discussions of the hypothesis which have 
appeared in works on inductive logic and in writings on 
scientific method, its structure and function have received 
considerable attention, while its origin has been compara- 
tively neglected. The hypothesis has generally been treated 
as that part of scientific procedure which marks the stage 
where a definite plan or method is proposed for dealing with 
new or unexplained facts. It is regarded as an invention 
for the purpose of explaining the given, as a definite con- 
jecture which is to be tested by an appeal to experience to 
see whether deductions made in accordance with it will be 
found true in fact. The function of the hypothesis is to 
unify, to furnish a method of dealing with things, and its 
structure must be suitable to this end. It must be so 
formed that it will be likely to prove valid, and writers 
have formulated various rules to be followed in the forma- 
tion of hypotheses. These rules state the main require- 
ments of a good hypothesis, and are intended to aid in a 
general way by pointing out certain limits within which it 
must fall. 

In respect to the origin of the hypothesis, writers have 
usually contented themselves with pointing out the kind of 
situations in which hypotheses are likely to appear. But 
after this has been done, after favorable external conditions 
have been given, the rest must be left to Vg e mu. s 3 " for 
hypotheses arise as "happy guesses," for which no rule or 
law can be given. In fact, the genius differs from the 
ordinary plodding mortal in just this ability to form fruitful 

143 



144 Studies in Logical Theory 

hypotheses in the midst of the same facts which to other less 
gifted individuals remain only so many disconnected expe- 
riences. 

This unequal stress which has been laid on the structure 
and function of the hypothesis in comparison with its origin 
may be attributed to three reasons: (1) The facts, or data, 
which constitute the working material of hypotheses are 
regarded as given to all alike, and all alike are more or less 
interested in systematizing and unifying experience. The 
purpose of the hypothesis and the opportunity for forming it 
are thus practically the same for all, and hence certain defi- 
nite rules can be laid down which will apply to all cases 
where hypotheses are to be employed. (2) But beyond this 
there seems to be no clue that can be formulated. There is 
apparently a more or less open acceptance of the final answer 
of the boy Zerah Colburn, who, when pressed to give an 
explanation of his method of instantaneous calculation, ex- 
claimed in despair: "God put it into my head, and I can't 
put it into yours." * (3) And, furthermore, there is very often 
a strong tendency to disregard investigation into the origin 
of that which is taken as given, for, since it is already 
present, its origin, whatever it may have been, can have 
nothing to do with what it is now. The facts, the data, 
are here, and must be dealt with as they are. Their past, 
their history or development, is entirely irrelevant. So, 
even if we could trace the hypothesis farther back on the 
psychological side, the investigation would be useless, for 
the rules to which a good hypothesis must conform would 
remain the same. 

Whether or not it can be shown that Zerah Colburn's 
ultimate explanation is needed in logic as little as Laplace 
asserted a similar one to be required in his celestial me- 

'De Morgan, Budget of Paradoxes, pp. 55, 56; quoted by Welton, Logic, Vol. 
II, p. 60. 



The Nature of Hypothesis 145 

chanics, it may at least be possible to defer it to some extent 
by means of a further psychological inquiry. It will be 
found that psychological inquiry into the origin of the 
hypothesis is not irrelevant in respect to an understanding 
of its structure and function ; for origin and function can- 
not be understood apart from each other, and, since struc- 
ture must be adapted to function, it cannot be independent 
of origin. In fact, origin, structure, and function are organ- 
ically connected, and each loses its meaning when absolutely 
separated from each other. It will be found, moreover, that 
the data which are commonly taken as the given material 
are not something to which the hypothesis is subsequently 
applied, but that, instead of this external relation between 
data and hypothesis, the hypothesis exercises a directive func- 
tion in determining what are the data. In a word, the main 
object of this discussion will be to contend against making 
a merely convenient and special way of regarding the 
hypothesis a full and adequate one. Though we speak of 
facts and of hypotheses that may be applied to them, it 
must not be forgotten that there are no facts which remain 
the same whatever hypothesis be applied to them ; and that 
there are no hypotheses which are hypotheses at all except 
in reference to their function in dealing with our subject- 
matter in such a way as to facilitate its f aciu^i^gpT^h^nsioii. \ 
Data are selected in order to be determined, and hypotheses 
are the ways in which this determination is carried on. If, 
as we shall attempt to show, the relation between data and 
hypothesis is not external, but strictly correlative, it is evi- 
dent that this fact must be taken into account in questions 
concerning deduction and induction, analytic and synthetic 
judgments, and the criterion of truth. Its bearing must be 
recognized in the investigation of metaphysical problems as 
well, for reality cannot be independent of the knowing 
process. In a word, the purpose of this discussion of the 



146 Studies in Logical Theory 

hypothesis is to determine its nature a little more precisely 
through an investigation of its rather obscure origin, and to 
call attention to certain features of its function which have 
not generally been accorded their due significance. 



The hypothesis as predicate. — It is generally admitted 
that the function of the hypothesis is to provide a way of 
dealing with the data or subject-matter which we need to 
organize. In this use of the hypothesis it appears in the 
role of predicate in a judgment of which the data, or facts, 
to be construed constitute the subject. 

In his attempts to reduce the movements of the planets 
about the sun to some general formula, Kepler finally hit 
upon the law since known as Kepler's law, viz., that the 
squares of the periodic times of the several planets are pro- 
portional to the cubes of their mean distances from the sun. 
This law was first tentatively advanced as a hypothesis. 
Kepler was not certain of its truth till it had proved its 
claim to acceptance. Neither did Newton have at first any 
great degree of assurance in regard to his law of gravitation, 
and was ready to give it up when he failed in his first attempt 
to test it by observation of the moon. And the same thing 
may be said about the caution of Darwin and other investi- 
gators in regard to accepting hypotheses. The only reason 
for their extreme care in not accepting at once their tentative 
formulations or suggestions was the fear that some other 
explanation might be the correct one. This rejection of 
other possibilities is the negative side of the matter. We 
become confident that our hypothesis is the right one as we 
lose confidence in other possible explanations ; and it might 
be added, without falling into a circle, that we lose confidence 
in the other possibilities as we become more convinced of 
our hypothesis. 



The Nature of Hypothesis 147 

It appears that such may be the relation of the positive 
and negative sides in case of such elaborate hypotheses as 
those of Kepler and Newton; but is it true where our 
hypotheses are more simple? It is not easy to understand 
why the fact that the hypothesis is more simple, and the 
time required for its formulation and test a good deal 
shorter, should materially change the state of affairs. The 
question remains: Why, if there is no opposition, should 
there be any uncertainty ? In all instances, then, the hypothe- 
sis appears as one among other possible predicates which 
may be applied to our data taken as subject-matter of a 
judgment. 

The predicate as hypothesis. — Suppose, then, the 
hypothesis is a predicate; is the predicate necessarily a 
hypothesis? This is the next question we are called upon 
to answer, and, since the predicate cannot very well be taken 
aside from the judgment, our question involves the nature 
of the judgment. 

While it will not be necessary to give a very complete 
account of the various definitions of the judgment that might 
be adduced, still the mention of a few of the more prominent 
ones may serve to indicate that something further is needed. 
In definitions of the judgment sometimes the subjective side 
is emphasized, sometimes the objective side, and in other 
instances there are attempts to combine the two. For 
instance, Lotze regards the judgment as the idea of a unity 
or relation between two concepts, with the further implica- 
tion that this connection holds true of the object referred 
to. J. S. Mill says that every proposition either affirms or 
denies existence, coexistence, sequence, causation, or resem- 
blance. Trendelenburg regards the judgment as a form of 
thought which corresponds to the real connection of things, 
while Ueberweg states the case a little differently, and says 
that the essence of judgment consists in recognizing the 



148 Studies in Logical Theory 

objective validity of a subjective connection of ideas. Royce 
points to a process of imitation and holds that in the judg- 
ment we try to portray by means of the ideas that enter into 
it. Ideas are imitative in their nature. Sigwart's view of 
the judgment is that in it we say something about some- 
thing. With him the judgment is a synthetic process, while 
Wundt considers its nature analytic and holds that, instead 
of uniting, or combining, concepts into a whole, it separates 
them out of a total idea or presentation. Instead of blend- 
ing parts into a whole, it separates the whole into its con- 
stituent parts. Bradley and Bosanquet both hold that in 
the judgment an ideal content comes into relation with 
reality. Bradley says that in every judgment reality is 
qualified by an idea, which is symbolic. The ideal content 
is recognized as such, and is referred to a reality beyond the 
act. This is the essence of judgment. Bosanquet seems 
to perceive a closer relation between idea and reality, for 
although he says that judgment is the "intellectual function 
which defines reality by significant ideas," he also tells us 
that "the subject is both in and out of the judgment, as 
Reality is both in and out of my consciousness." 

In all these definitions of judgment the predicate appears 
as ideal. An ideal content is predicated of something, 
whether we regard this something as an idea or as reality 
beyond, or as reality partly within and partly without the 
act of judging ; and it is ideal whether we consider it as one 
of the three parts into which judgments are usually divided, 
or whether we say, with Bosanquet and Bradley, that sub- 
ject, predicate, and copula all taken together form a single 
ideal content, which is somehow applied to reality. More- 
over, we not only judge about reality, but it seems to be 
quite immaterial to reality whether we judge concerning it 
or not. 

Many of our judgments prove false. Not only do we err 



The Nature of Hypothesis 149 

in our judgments, but we often hesitate in making them for 
fear of being wrong; we feel there are other possibilities, 
and our predication becomes tentative. Here we have some- 
thing very like the hypothesis, for our ideal content shows 
itself to be a tentative attempt in the presence of alterna- 
tives to qualify and systematize reality. It appears, then, 
on the basis of the views of the judgment that have been 
mentioned, that not only do we find the hypothesis taking 
its place as the predicate of a judgment, but the predicate is 
itself essentially of the nature of a hypothesis. 

In the views of the judgment so far brought out, reality, 
with which it is generally admitted that the judgment 
attempts to deal in some way, appears to lie outside the act 
of judging. Now, everyone would say that we make some 
advance in judging, and that we have a better grasp of 
things after than before. But how is this possible if reality 
lies without or beyond our act of judging ? Is the reality 
we now have the same that we had to begin with? If so, 
then we have made no advance as far as the real itself is 
concerned. If merely our conception of it has changed, 
then it is not clear why we may not be even worse off than 
before. If reality does lie beyond our judgment, then how, 
in the nature of the case, can we ever know whether we 
have approached it or have gone still farther away? To 
make any claim of approximation implies that we do reach 
reality in some measure, at least, and, if so, it is difficult to 
understand how it lies beyond, and is independent of, the 
act of judging. 

Further analysis of judgment. — It remains to be seen 
whether a further investigation of the judgment will still 
show the predicate to be a hypothesis. It is evident that in 
some cases the judgment appears at the end of a more or 
less pronounced reflective process, during which other pos- 
sible judgments have suggested themselves, but have been 



150 Studies in Logical Theory 

rejected. The history of scientific discovery is filled with 
cases which illustrate the nature of the process by which a 
new theory is developed. For instance, in Darwin's Forma- 
tion of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Earth Worms, 
we find the record of successive steps in the development of 
his hypothesis. Darwin suspected from his observations that 
vegetable mold was due to some agency which was not yet 
determined. He reasoned that if vegetable mold is the result 
of the life-habits of earthworms, i. e., if earth is brought up 
by them from beneath the surface and afterward spread out 
by wind and rain, then small objects lying on the surface of the 
ground would tend to disappear gradually below the surface. 
Facts seemed to support his theory, for layers of red sand, 
pieces of chalk, and stones were found to have disappeared 
below the surface in a greater or less degree. A common 
explanation had been that heavy objects tend to sink in soft 
soil through their own weight, but the earthworm hypothe- 
sis led to a more careful examination of the data. It was 
found that the weight of the object and the softness of the 
ground made no marked difference, for sand and light objects 
sank, and the ground was not always soft. In general, it 
was shown that where earthworms were found vegetable 
mold was also present, and vice versa. 

In this investigation of Darwin's the conflicting explana- 
tions of sinking stones appear within the main question of 
the formation of vegetable mold by earthworms. The facts 
that disagreed with the old theory about sinking stones were 
approached through this new one. But the theories had some- 
thing in common, viz., the disappearance of the stones or 
other objects : they differed in their further determination of 
this disappearance. In this case it may seem as if the facts 
which were opposed to the current theory of sinking stones 
were seen to be discrepant only after the earthworm hypothe- 
sis had been advanced; the conflict between the new facts 



The Nature of Hypothesis 151 

and the old theory appears to have arisen through the influ- 
ence of the new theory. 

There are cases, however, where the facts seem clearly to 
contradict the old theory and thus give rise to a new one. 
For example, we find in Darwin's introduction to his Origin 
of Species the following: "In considering the origin of 
species it is quite conceivable that a naturalist reflecting on 
the mental affinities of organic beings, on their embryologi- 
cal relations, their geographical distribution, geological suc- 
cession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion 
that species had not been independently created but had 
descended, like varieties, from other species." It would 
seem from this statement that certain data were found for 
which the older theory of independent creation did not offer 
an adequate explanation. And yet the naturalist would 
hardly "reflect" on all these topics in a comparative way 
unless some other mode of interpretation were already dawn- 
ing upon him, which led him to review the accepted reflec- 
tions or views. 

As a more simple illustration, we may cite the common 
experience of a person who is uncertain concerning the 
identity of an approaching object, say, another person. At 
first he may not be sure it is a person at all. He then sees 
that it is someone, and as the person approaches he is inclined 
to believe him to be an acquaintance. As the supposed 
acquaintance continues to approach, the observer may dis- 
tinguish certain features that cause him to doubt, and then 
relinquish his supposition that it is an acquaintance. Or, 
he may conclude at once that the approaching person is 
another individual he knows, and the transition may be so 
readily made from one to the other that it would be difficult 
to determine whether the discordant features are discordant 
before the new supposition arises, or whether they are not 
recognized as conflicting till this second person is in mind. 



152 Studies in Logical Theory 

Or, again, the identification of the new individual and the 
discovery of the features that are in conflict with the first 
supposition may appear to go on together. 

Now, marked lines of likeness appear between this 
relatively simple judgment and the far more involved ones 
of scientific research. In the more extended scientific 
process we find data contradicting an old theory and a new 
hypothesis arising to account for them. The hypothesis is 
tested, and along with its verification we have the rejection, 
or rather the modification, of the old theory. Similarly, in 
case of the approaching stranger all these features are 
present, though in less pronounced degree. In scientific 
investigation there is an interval of testing by means of more 
careful consideration of the data and even actual experimen- 
tation. Before an explanation is accepted subject to test, a 
number of others may have been suggested and rejected. 
They may not have received even explicit recognition. In 
case of the identification of the stranger this feature is 
also present. Between two fairly definite attempts to 
identify the mind does not remain a mere blank or station- 
ary, but other possible identifications may be suggested 
which do not have sufficient plausibility to command serious 
attention; they are only comparatively brief suggestions or 
tendencies. 

It is to be noted that in all these instances the first sup- 
position was not entirely abandoned, but was modified and 
more exactly determined. (Why it could not be wholly 
false and the new one wholly new, will be considered later 
in connection with discussion of the persistence and re- 
formation of habit.) There was such a modification of the 
old theory as would meet the requirements of the new data, 
and the new explanations thus contained both old and new 
features. 

We have seen that the predicate of the scientific judg- 



The Nature of Hypothesis 153 

ment is a hypothesis which is consciously applied to certain 
data. If the similarity between the scientific judgment and 
the more immediate and simple judgment is to be main- 
tained, it is clear that the predicate of the simple judgment 
must be of like nature. The structure of the two varieties 
of judgment differs only in the degree of explicitness which 
the hypothesis acquires. That is, the predicate of a judg- 
ment, as such, is ideal; it is meaning, significant quality. 
If conditions are such as to make the one judging hesitant 
or doubtful the mind wavers; the predicate is not applied 
at once to the determination or qualification of data, and 
hence comes to more distinct consciousness on its own 
account. From being "ideal," it becomes an idea. Yet its 
sole purpose and value remains in its possible use to inter- 
pret data. Let the idea remain detached, and let the query 
whether it be a true predicate (i. e., really fit to be employed 
in determining the present data) become more critical, and 
the idea becomes clearly a hypothesis. 1 In other words, the 
hypothesis is just the predicate-function of judgment defi- 
nitely apprehended and regarded with reference to its nature 
and adequacy. 

Psychological analysis of judgment. — This hypothetical 
nature of the predicate will be even more apparent after a 
further psychological analysis, which, while applying more 
directly to the simpler and more immediate judgments, may 
be extended to the more involved ones as well. 

In psychological terms, we may say, in explanation of 
the judging process, that some stimulus to action has failed 
to function properly as a stimulus, and that the activity 

lAdvanced grammarians treat this matter in a way which should be instructive 
to logicians. The hypothesis, says Sweet (§ 295 of A New English Grammar, Logical 
and Historical, Oxford, 1892), suggests an affirmation or negation "as objects of 
thought." "In fact, we often say supposing (that is, 'thinking') it is true, instead 
of if it is true." In a word, the hypothetical judgment as such puts explicitly before 
us the content of thought, of the predicate or hypothesis ; and in so far is a moment 
in judgment rather than adequate judgment itself. 



154 Studies in Logical Theory 

which was going on has thus been interrupted. Response 
in the accustomed way.has failed. In such a case there 
arises a division in experience into sensation content as sub- 
ject and ideal content as predicate. In other words, an 
activity has been going on in accordance with established 
habits, but upon failure of the accustomed stimulus to be 
longer an adequate stimulus this particular activity ceases, 
and is resumed in an integral form only when a new habit 
is set up to which the new or altered stimulus is adequate. It 
is in this process of reconstruction that subject and predicate 
appear. Sensory quality marks the point of stress, or 
seeming arrest, while the ideal or imaged aspect defines the 
continuing activity as projected, and hence that with which 
start is to be made in coping with the obstacle. It serves as 
standpoint of regard and mode of indicated behavior. The 
sensation stands for the interrupted habit, while the image 
stands for the new habit, that is, the new way of dealing 
with the subject-matter. 1 

It appears, then, that the purpose of the judgment is to 
obtain an adequate stimulus in that, when stimulus and 
response are adjusted to each other, activity will be resumed. 
But if this reconstruction and response were to follow at 
once, would there be any clearly defined act of judging at 
all? In such a case there would be no judgment, properly 
speaking, and no occasion for it. There would be simply a 
ready transition from one line of activity to another; we 
should have changed our method of reaction easily and 
readily to meet the new requirements. On the one hand, 
our subject-matter would not have become a clearly recog- 
nized datum with which we must deal; on the other hand, 
there would be no ideal method of construing it. 2 Activity 

1 This carries with it, of course, the notion that " sensation " and " image " are 
not distinct psychical existences in themselves, but are distinguished logical forces. 

2 Concerning the strict correlativity of subject and predicate, data and hypo- 
thesis, see p. 34. 



The Nature of Hypothesis 155 

would have changed without interruption, and neither sub- 
ject nor predicate would have arisen. 

In order that judgment may take place there must be 
interruption and suspense. Under what conditions, then, is 
this suspense and uncertainty possible ? Our reply must be 
that we hesitate because of more or less sharply denned 
alternatives ; we are not sure which predicate, which method 
of reaction, is the right one. The clearness with which 
these alternatives come to mind depends upon the degree of 
explicitness of the judgment, or, more exactly, the explicit- 
ness of the judgment depends upon the sharpness of these 
alternatives. Alternatives may be carefully weighed one 
against the other, as in deliberative judgments ; or they may 
be scarcely recognized as alternatives, as in the case in the 
greater portion of our more simple judgments of daily con- 
duct. 

The predicate is essentially hypothetical. — If we review 
in a brief r6sum6 the types of judgment we have considered, 
we find in the explicit scientific judgment a fairly well- 
defined subject-matter which we seek further to determine. 
Different suggestions present themselves with varying 
degrees of plausibility. Some are passed by as soon as 
they arise. Others gain a temporary recognition. Some 
are explicitly tested with resulting acceptance or rejec- 
tion. The acceptance of any one explanation involves the 
rejection of some other explanation. During the process of 
verification or test the newly advanced supposition is recog- 
nized to be more or less doubtful. Besides the hypothesis 
which is tentatively applied there is recognized the possi- 
bility of others. In the disjunctive judgment these possible 
reactions are thought to be limited to certain clearly defined 
alternatives, while in the less explicit judgments they are 
not so clearly brought out. Throughout the various forms 
of judgment, from the most complex and deliberate down to 



o 



156 Studies in Logical Theory 

the most simple and immediate, we found that a process 
could be traced which was like in kind and varied only in 
degree. And, finally, in the most immediate judgments 
where some of these features seem to disappear, the same 
account not only appears to be the most reasonable one, but 
there is the additional consideration, from the psychological 
side, that were not the judgment of this doubtful, tentative 
character, it would be difficult to understand how there could 
be judgment as distinct from a reflex. It appears, then, that 
throughout, the predicate is essentially of the nature of a 
hypothesis for dealing with the subject-matter. And, how- 
ever simple and immediate, or however involved and pro- 
longed, the judgment may be, it is to be regarded as 
essentially a process of reconstruction which aims at the 
resumption of an interrupted experience ; and when experi- 
ence has become itself a consciously intellectual affair, at the 
restoration of a unified objective situation. 

II 

Criticism of certain views concerning the hypothesis. — 
The explanation we have given of the hypothesis will enable 
us to criticise the treatment it has received from the 
empirical and the rationalistic schools. We shall endeavor 
to point out that these schools have, in spite of their opposed 
views, an assumption in common — something given in a 
fixed, or non-instrumental way; and that consequently the 
hypothesis is either impossible or else futile. 

Bacon is commonly recognized as a leader in the reac- 
tionary inductive movement, which arose with the decline 
of scholasticism, and will serve as a good example of the 
extreme empirical position. In place of authority and the 
deductive method, Bacon advocated a return to nature and 
induction from data given through observation. The new 
method which he advanced has both a positive and a 



c 



The Nature of Hypothesis 



157 



negative side. Before any positive steps can be taken, the 
mind must be cleared of the various false opinions and 
prejudices that have been acquired. This preliminary task 
of freeing the mind from "phantoms," or "eidola," which 
Bacon likened to the cleansing of the threshing-floor, having 
been accomplished, nature should be carefully interrogated. 
There must be no hasty generalization, for the true method 
"collects axioms from sense and particulars, ascending con- 
tinuously and by degrees, so that in the end it arrives at 
the most general axioms." These axioms of Bacon's are 
generalizations based on observation, and are to be applied 
deductively, but the distinguishing feature of Bacon's 
induction is its carefully graduated steps. Others, too, had 
proceeded with caution (for instance Galileo), but Bacon laid 
more stress than they on the subordination of steps. 

It is evident that Bacon left very little ro6m for hypothe- 
ses, and this is in keeping with his aversion to anticipa- 
tion of nature by means of "phantoms" of any sort; he 
even said explicitly that " our method of discovery in science 
is of such a nature that there is not much left to acuteness 
and strength of genius, but all degrees of genius and intel- 
lect are brought nearly to the same level." 1 Bacon gave no 
explanation of the function of the hypothesis ; in his opinion 
it had no lawful place in scientific procedure and must be 
banished as a disturbing element. Instead of the recipro- 
cal relation between hypothesis and data, in which hypothe- 
sis is not only tested in experience, but at the same time 
controls in a measure the very experience which tests it, 
Bacon would have a gradual extraction of general laws from 
nature through direct observation. He is so afraid of the 
distorting influence of conception that he will have nothing 
to do with conception upon any terms. So fearful is. he of 
the influence of pre-judgment, of prejudice, that he will have 



Y^v 









4 



iO 



iw- ; ' 



1 Novum Organum, Vol. I, p. 61. 



158 Studies in Logical Theory 

no judging which depends upon ideas, since the idea 
involves anticipation of the fact. Particulars are some- 
how to arrange and classify themselves, and to record or 
register, in a mind free from conception, certain generaliza- 
tions. Ideas are to be registered derivatives of the given 
particulars. This view is the essence of empiricism as a 
logical theory. If the views regarding the logic of thought 
before set forth are correct, it goes without saying that such 
empiricism is condemned to self-contradiction. It endeavors 
to construct judgment in terms of its subject alone; and 
the subject, as we have seen, is always a co-respondent to a 
predicate — an idea or mental attitude or tendency of intellec- 
tual determination. Thus the subject of judgment can be deter- 
mined only with reference to a corresponding determination 
of the predicate. Subject and predicate, fact and idea, are con- 
temporaneous, not serial in their relations (see pp. 110-12). 

Less technically the failure of Bacon's denial of the worth 
of hypothesis — which is in such exact accord with empiri- 
cism in logic — shows itself in his attitude toward experi- 
mentation and toward observation. Bacon's neglect of 
experimentation is not an accidental oversight, but is bound 
up with his view regarding the worthlessness of conception 
or anticipation. To experiment means to setfout from an 
idea as well as from facts, and to try to construe, or even to 
discover, facts in accordance with the idea. Experimenta- 
tion not only anticipates, but strives to make good an antici- 
pation. Of course, this struggle is checked at every point 
by success or failure, and thus the hypothesis is continuously 
undergoing in varying ratios both confirmation and transfor- 
mation. But this is not to make the hypothesis secondary to 
the fact. It is simply to remain true to the proposition that 
the distinction and the relationship of the two is a thoroughly 
contemporaneous one. But it is impossible to draw any 
fixed line between experimentation and scientific observa- 



The Nature of Hypothesis 159 

tions. To insist upon the need of systematic observation 
and collection of particulars is to set up a principle which is 
as distinct from the casual accumulation of impressions as 
it is from nebulous speculation. If there is to be observa- j 
tion of a directed sort, it must be with reference to some 
problem, some doubt, and this, as we have seen, is a stimu- 
lus which throws the mind into a certain attitude of response. 
Controlled observation is inquiry, it is search; consequently 
it must be search for something. Nature cannot answer 
interrogations excepting as such interrogations are put; and 
the putting of a question involves anticipation. ■ The observer 
does not inquire about anything or look for anything except- 
ing as he is after something. This search implies at once 
the incompleteness of the particular given facts, and the 
possibility — that is ideal — of their completion. 

It was not long until the development of natural science 
compelled a better understanding of its actual procedure 
than Bacon possessed. Empiricism changed to experimen- 
talism. With experimentalism inevitably came the recog- 
nition of hypotheses in observing, collecting, and comparing 
facts. It is clear, for instance,that Newton's fruitful investi- 
gations are not conducted in accordance with the Baconian 
notion. It is quite clear that his celebrated four rules for 
philosophizing 1 are in truth statements of certain principles 
which are to be observed in forming hypotheses. They 
imply that scientific technique had advanced to a point 

iNewton's " Rules for Philosophizing " (Principia, Book III) are as follows: 

Rule I. " No more causes of natural things are to be admitted than such as are 
both true, and sufficient to explain the phenomena of those things. 1 ' 

Rule II. " Natural effects of the same kind are to be referred as far as possible 
to the same causes.'' 

Rule III. " Those qualities of bodies that can neither be increased nor dimin- 
ished in intensity, and which are found to belong to all bodies within reach of our 
experiments are to be regarded as qualities of all bodies whatever.'" 

Rule IV. "In experimental philosophy propositions collected by induction 
from phenomena are to be regarded either as accurately true or very nearly true 
notwithstanding any contrary hypothesis, till other phenomena occur, by which they 
are made more accurate, or are rendered subject to exceptions." 




160 Studies in Logical Theory 

where hypotheses were such regular and indispensable fac- 
tors that certain uniform conditions might be laid down for 
their use. The fourth rule in particular is a statement of 
the relative validity of hypothesis as such until there is 
ground for entertaining a contrary hypothesis. 

The subsequent history of logical theory in England is 
conditioned upon its attempt to combine into one system the 
theories of empiristic logic with recognition of the procedure 
of experimental science. This attempt finds its culmination 
in the logic of John Stuart Mill. Of his interest in and 
fidelity to the actual procedure of experimental science, as 
he saw it, there can be no doubt. Of his good faith in con- 
cluding his Introduction with the words following there can 
be no doubt: "I can conscientiously affirm that no one 
proposition laid down in this work has been adopted for the 
sake of establishing, or with any reference for its fitness in 
being employed in establishing, preconceived opinions in 
any department of knowledge or of inquiry on which the 
speculative world is still undecided." Yet Mill was equally 
attached to the belief that ultimate reality, as it is for the 
human mind, is given in sensations, independent of ideas ; 
and that all valid ideas are combinations and convenient 
ways of using such given material. Mill's very sincerity made 
it impossible that this belief should not determine, at every 
point, his treatment of the thinking process and of its various 
instrumentalities. 

In Book III, chap. 14, Mill discusses the logic of expla- 
nation, and in discussing this topic naturally finds it neces- 
sary to consider the matter of the proper use of scientific 
hypotheses. This is conducted from the standpoint of their 
use as that is reflected in the technique of scientific dis- 
covery. In Book IV, chap. 2, he discusses "Abstraction or 
the Formation of Conceptions " — a topic which obviously 
involves the forming of hypotheses. In this chapter, his con- 



The Nature of Hypothesis 161 

sideration is conducted in terms, not of scientific procedure, 

but of general philosophical theory, and this point of view 

is emphasized by the fact that he is opposing a certain view 

of Dr. Whewell. 

The contradiction between the statements in the two 

chapters will serve to bring out the two points already made, 

viz., the correspondent character of datum and hypothesis, 

and the origin of the latter in a problematic situation and its 

consequent use as an instrument of unification and solution. 

Mill first points out that hypotheses are invented to enable 

the deductive method to be applied earlier to phenomena; 

that it does this by suppressing the first of the three steps, 

induction, ratiocination, and verification. He states that: 

The process of tracing regularity in any complicated, and at 
first sight confused, set of appearances is necessarily tentative; we 
begin by making any supposition, even a false one, to see what con- 
sequences will follow from it; and by observing how these differ 
from the real phenomena, we learn what corrections to make in our 

assumption Neither induction nor deduction would enable 

us to understand even the simplest phenomena, if we did not 
often commence by anticipating the results; by making a provi- 
sional supposition, at first essentially conjectural, as to some of the 
very notions which constitute the final object of the inquiry. 1 

If in addition we recognize that, according to Mill, our 
direct experience of nature always presents us with a compli- 
cated and confused set of appearances, we shall be in no 
doubt as to the importance of ideas as anticipations of a pos- 
sible experience not yet had. Thus he says: 

The order of nature, as perceived at a first glance, presents at 
every instant a chaos followed by another chaos. We must decom- 
pose each chaos into single facts. We must learn to see in the 
chaotic antecedent a multitude of distinct antecedents, in the cha- 
otic consequent a multitude of distinct consequents. 2 

iBook HI, chap. 2, sec. 5 ; italics mine. The latter part of the passage, begin- 
ning with the words " If we did not often commence," etc., is quoted by Mill from 
Comte. The words " neither induction nor deduction would enable us to understand 
even the simplest phenomena" are his own. 

2 Book III, chap. 7, sec. 1. 



162 Studies in Logical Theory 

In the next section of the same chapter he goes on to state 
that, having discriminated the various antecedents and con- 
sequents, we then " are to inquire which is connected with 
which." This requires a still further resolution of the complex 
and of the confused. To effect this we must vary the cir- 
cumstances; we must modify the experience as given with 
reference to accomplishing our purpose. To accomplish 
this purpose we have recourse either to observation or to 
experiment: "We may either find an instance in nature 
suited to our purposes, or, by an artificial arrangement of 
circumstances, make one" (the italics in "suited to our pur- 
pose" are mine; the others are Mill's). He then goes on to 
say that there is no real logical distinction between observa- 
tion and experimentation. The four methods of experimen- 
tal inquiry are expressly discussed by Mill in terms of their 
worth in singling out and connecting the antecedents and 
consequents which actually belong together, from the chaos 
and confusion of direct experience. 

We have only to take these statements in their logical 
connection with each other (and this connection runs through 
the entire treatment by Mill of scientific inquiry), to recog- 
nize the absolute necessity of hypothesis to undertaking any 
directed inquiry or scientific operation. Consequently we 
are not surprised at finding him saying that "the function 
of hypotheses is one which must be reckoned absolutely 
indispensable in science ;" and again that " the hypothesis 
by suggesting observations and experiments puts us on the 
road to independent evidence." 1 

Since Mill's virtual retraction, from the theoretical point 
of view, of what is here said from the standpoint of scientific 
procedure, regarding the necessity of ideas is an accompani- 
ment of his criticism of Whewell, it will put the discussion 
in better perspective if we turn first to Whewell' s views. 2 

i Book III, chap. 14, sees. 4 and 5. 

2 William Whewell, The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, London, 1840. 



The Nature of Hypothesis 163 

The latter began by stating a distinction which easily might 
have been developed into a theory of the relation of fact and 
idea which is in line with that advanced in this chapter, and 
indeed in this volume as a whole. He questions (chap. 2) 
the fixity of the distinction between theory and practice. 
He points out that what we term facts are in effect simply 
accepted inferences; and that what we call theories are 
describable as facts, in proportion as they become thoroughly 
established. A true theory is a fact. "All the great theories 
which have successively been established in the world are 
now thought of as facts." "The most recondite theories 
when firmly established are accepted as facts ; the simplest 
facts seem to involve something of the nature of theory." 

The conclusion is that the distinction is a historic one, 
depending upon the state of knowledge at the time, and 
upon the attitude of the individual. What is theory for one 
epoch, or for one inquirer in a given epoch, is fact for some 
other epoch, or even for some other more advanced inquirer 
in the same epoch. It is theory when the element of infer- 
ence involved in judging any fact is consciously brought 
out; it is fact when the conditions are such that we have 
never been led to question the inference involved, or else, 
having questioned it, have so thoroughly examined into the 
inferential process that there is no need of holding it further 
before the mind, and it relapses into unconsciousness again. 
" If this greater or less consciousness of our own internal act 
be all that distinguishes fact from theory, we must allow that 
the distinction is still untenable " (untenable, that is to say, 
as a fixed separation). Again, "fact and theory have no 
essential difference except in the degree of their certainty 
and familiarity. Theory, when it becomes firmly estab- 
lished and steadily lodged in the mind becomes fact." (P. 45; 
italics mine.) And, of course, it is equally true that as fast 
as facts are suspected or doubted, certain aspects of them 



164 Studies in Logical Theory 

are transferred into the class of theories and even of mere 
opinions. 

I say this conception might have been developed in a 
way entirely congruous with the position of this chapter. 
This would have happened if the final distinction between 
fact and idea had been formulated upon the basis simply of 
the points, " relative certainty and familiarity." From 
this point of view the distinction between fact and idea is 
one purely relative to the doubt-inquiry function. It has 
to do with the evolution of an experience as regards its con- 
scious surety. It has its origin in problematic situations. 
Whatever appears to us as a problem appears as contrasted 
with a possible solution. Whatever objects of thought refer 
particularly to the problematic side are theories, ideas, 
hypotheses; whatever relates to the solution side is surety, 
unquestioned familiarity, fact. This point of view makes 
the distinctions entirely relative to the exigencies of the pro- 
cess of reflective transformation of experience. 

Whewell, however, had no sooner started in this train of 
thought than he turns his back upon it. In chap. 3 he trans- 
forms what he had proclaimed to be a relative, historic, and 
working distinction into a fixed and absolute one. He 
distinguishes between sensations and ideas, not upon a 
genetic basis with reference to establishing the conditions 
of further operation ; but with reference to a fundamentally 
fixed line of demarkation between what is passively given to 
the mind and the activity put forth by the mind. Thus he 
reinstates in its most generalized and fixed, and therefore 
most vicious, form the separation which he has just rejected. 
Sensations are a brute unchangeable element of fact which 
exists and persists independent of ideas; an idea is a 
mode of mental operation which occurs and recurs in an 
independent individuality of its own. If he had carried out 
the line of thought with which he began, sensation as fact 



The Nature of Hypothesis 165 

would have been that residuum of familiarity and certainty 
which cannot be eliminated, however much else of an expe- 
rience is dissolved in the inner conflict. Idea as hypothe- 
sis or theory would have been the corresponding element 
in experience which is necessary to redintegrate this resi- 
duum into a coherent and significant experience. 

But since Whewell did not follow out his own line of 
thought, choosing rather to fall back on the Kantian anti- 
thesis of sense and thought, he had no sooner separated his 
fact and idea, his given datum and his mental relation, than 
he is compelled to get them together again. The idea be- 
comes "a general relation which is imposed upon perception 
by an act of the mind, and which is different from anything 
which our senses directly offer to us" (p. 26). Such con- 
ceptions are necessary to connect the facts which we learn 
from our senses into truths. "The ideal conception which 
the mind itself supplies is superinduced upon the facts as 
they are originally presented to observation. Before the 
inductive truth is detected, the facts are there, but they are 
many and unconnected. The conception which the dis- 
coverer applies to them gives them connection and unity." 
(P. 42.) All induction, according to Whewell, thus depends 
upon superinduction — imposition upon sensory data of cer- 
tain ideas or general relations existing independently in 
the mind. 1 

We do not need to present again the objections already 
offered to this view: the impossibility of any orderly stimu- 
lation of ideas by facts, and the impossibility of any check 
in the imposition of idea upon fact. "Facts" and concep- 
tion are so thoroughly separate and independent that any 
sensory datum is indifferently and equally related to any 
conceivable idea. There is no basis for " superinducing" 

1 The essential similarity between Whewell 's view and that of Lotze, already dis- 
cussed (see chap. 3) is of course explainable on the basis of their common relation- 
ship to Kant. 



166 Studies in Logical Theoby 

one idea or hypothesis, rather than any other, upon any 
particular set of data. 

In the chapter already referred to upon abstraction, or 
the formation of conceptions, Mill seizes upon this difficulty. 
Yet he and Whewell have one point in common: they both 
agree in the existence of a certain subject-matter which is 
given for logical purposes quite outside of the logical pro- 
cess itself. Mill agrees with Whewell in postulating a 
raw material of pure sensational data. In criticising Whew- 
ell's theory of superinduction of idea upon fact, he is 
therefore led to the opposite assertion of the complete depend- 
ence of ideas as such upon the given facts as such — in 
other words, he is led to a reiteration of the fundamental 
Baconian empiricism; and thus to a virtual retraction of 
what he had asserted regarding the necessity of ideas to 
fruitful scientific inquiry, whether in the way of observa- 
tion or experimentation. The following quotation gives a 
fair notion of the extent of Mill's retraction: 

The conceptions then which we employ for the colligation and 
methodization of facts, do not develop themselves from within, but 
are impressed upon the mind from without; they are never ob- 
tained otherwise than by way of comparison and abstraction, and, 
in the most important and most numerous cases, are evolved by ab- 
straction from the very phenomena which it is their office to colli- 
gate} 

Even here Mill's sense for the positive side of scientific in- 
quiry suffices to reveal to him that the "facts" are some- 
how inadequate and defective, and are in need of assistance 
from ideas — and yet the ideas which are to help out the 
facts are to be the impress of the unsure facts! The con- 
tradiction comes out very clearly when Mill says: "The 
really difficult cases are those in which the conception des- 
tined to create light and order out of darkness and confu- 

i Logic, Book IV, chap. 2, sec. 2 ; italics mine. 



The Nature of Hypothesis 167 

sion has to be sought for among the very phenomena which 
it afterward serves to arrange." 1 

Of course, there is a sense in which Mill's view is very 
much nearer the truth than is Whewell's. Mill at least sees 
that " idea " must be relevant to the facts or data w^ich it is 
to arrange, which are to have "light and order" introduced 
into them by means of the idea. He sees clearly enough 
that this is impossible save as the idea develops within the 
same experience in which the "dark and confused" facts are 
presented. He goes on to show correctly enough how con- 
flicting data lead the mind to a "confused feeling of an 
analogy " between the data of the confused experience and 
of some other experience which is orderly (or already colli- 
gated and methodized) ; and how this vague feeling, through 
processes of further exploration and comparison of experi- 
ences, gets a clearer and more adequate form until we finally 
accept it. He shows how in this process we continually 
judge of the worth of the idea which is in process of forma- 
tion, by reference to its appropriateness to our purpose. He 
goes so far as to say : " The question of appropriateness is 
relative to the particular object we have in view." 2 He sums 
up his discussion by stating: "We cannot frame good gen- 
eral conceptions beforehand. That the conception we have 
obtained is the one we want can only be known when we have 
done the work for the sake of which ice wanted it. " 3 

This all describes the actual state of the case, but it is 
consistent only with a logical theory which makes the dis- 
tinction between fact and hypothesis instrumental in the 
tiansformation of experience from a confused into an organ- 
ized form ; not with Mill's notion that sensations are some- 
how finally and completely given as ultimate facts, and 

i Ibid. 

2 ibid., sec. 4; in sec. 6 he states even more expressly that any conception is ap- 
propriate in the degree in which it " helps us toward what we wish to understand." 

3 Ibid., sec. 6; italics mine. 



168 Studies in Logical Theoby 

that ideas are mere re-registrations of such facts. It is 
perfectly just to say that the hypothesis is impressed upon 
the mind (in the sense that any notion which occurs to the 
mind is impressed) in the course of an experience. It is 
well enough, if one define what he means, to say that the 
hypothesis is impressed (that is to say, occurs or is sug- 
gested) through the medium of given facts, or even of sen- 
sations. But it is equally true that the facts are presented 
and that sensations occur within the course of an experience 
which is larger than the bare facts, because involving the 
conflicts among them and the corresponding intention to 
treat them in some fashion which will secure a unified expe- 
rience. Facts get power to suggest ideas to the mind — to 
" impress" — only through their position in an entire expe- 
rience which is in process of disintegration and of recon- 
struction — their " fringe " or feeling of tendency is quite 
as factual as they are. The fact that "the conception we 
have obtained is the one we want can be known only when 
we have done the work for the sake of which we wanted it," 
is enough to show that it is not bare facts, but facts in rela- 
tion to want and purpose and purpose in relation to facts, 
which originate the hypothesis. 

It would be interesting to follow the history of discus- 
sion of the hypothesis since the time of Whewell and of Mill, 
particularly in the writings of Jevons, Venn, and Bosanquet. 
This history would refine the terms of our discussion by 
introducing more complex distinctions and relations. But 
it would be found, I think, only to refine, not to introduce 
any fundamentally new principles. In each case, we find the 
writer struggling with the necessity of distinguishing 
between fact and idea; of giving the fact a certain primacy 
with respect to testing of idea and of giving the idea a primacy 
with respect to the significance and orderliness of the fact; 
and of holding throughout to a relationship of idea with 



The Nature of Hypothesis 169 

fact so intimate that the idea develops only by being "com- 
pared" with facts (that is, used in construing them), and facts 
get to be known only as they are " connected " through the 
idea — and we find that what is a maze of paradoxes and 
inconsistencies from an absolute, from a non-historic stand- 
point, is a matter of course the moment it is looked at from 
the standpoint of experience engaged in self -transformation 
of meaning through conflict and reconstitution. 

But we can only note one or two points. Jevons's "infi- 
nite ballot-box " of nature which is absolutely neutral as to 
any particular conception or idea, and which accordingly 
requires as its correlate the formation of every possible hy- 
pothesis (all standing in themselves upon the same level of 
probability) is an interesting example of the logical conse- 
quences of feeling the need of both fact and hypothesis for 
scientific procedure and yet regarding them as somehow 
arising independently of each other. It is an attempt to 
combine extreme empiricism and extreme rationalism. The 
process of forming hypotheses and of deducing their rational 
consequences goes on at random, because the disconnectedness 
of facts as given is so ultimate that the facts suggest one hypo- 
thesis no more readily than another. Mathematics, in its two 
forms of measurements as applied to the facts, and of calcula- 
tion as applied in deduction, furnishes Jevons the bridge by 
which he finally covers the gulf which he has first himself cre- 
ated. Venn's theory requires little or no restatement to bring 
it into line with the position taken in the text. He holds to 
the origin of hypothesis in the original practical needs of 
mankind, and to its gradual development into present scien- 
tific form. 1 He states expressly: 

The distinction between ivhat is known and what is not 
known is essential to Logic, and peculiarly characteristic of it 
in a degree not to be found in any other science. Inference is the 

i Venn, Empirical Logic, p. 383. 



170 Studies in Logical Theoey 

process of passing from one to the other; from facts which we had 
accepted as premises, to those which we have not yet accepted, 
but are in the act of doing so by the very process in question. No 
scrutiny of the facts themselves, regarded as objective, can ever 
detect these characteristics of their greater or less familiarity to 
our minds. We must introduce also the subjective element if we 
wish to give any adequate explanation of them. 1 

Venn, however, does not attempt a thoroughgoing state- 
ment of logical distinctions, relations, and operations, as 
parts "of the act of passing from the unknown to the known." 
He recognizes the relation of reflection to a historic process, 
which we have here termed "reconstruction," and the origin 
and worth of hypothesis as a tool in the movement, but does 
not carry his analysis to a systematic form. 

.in 

Origin of the hypothesis. — In our analysis of the process 
of judgment, we attempted to show that the predicate arises 
in case of failure of some line of activity going on in terms 
of an established habit. When the old habit is checked 
through failure to deal with new conditions (i. e., when the 
situation is such as to stimulate two habits with distinct 
aims) the problem is to find a new method of response — 
that is, to co-ordinate the conflicting tendencies by building 
up a single aim which will function the existing situation. 
As we saw that, in case of judgment, habit when checked 
became ideal, an idea, so the new habit is first formalized as 
an ideal type of reaction and is the hypothesis by which we 
attempt to construe new data. In our inquiry as to how this 
formulation is effected, i. e. , how the hypothesis is developed, 
it will be convenient to take some of the currently accepted 
statements as to their origin, and show how these statements 
stand in reference to the analysis proposed. 

1 Venn, Empirical Logic, p. 25; italics mine. 



The Nature of Hypothesis 171 

Enumerative induction and allied processes. — It is 
pointed out by Welton 1 that the various ways in which 
hypotheses are suggested may be reduced to three classes, 
viz., enumerative induction, conversion of propositions, and 
analogy. Under the head of "enumeration" he reminds us 
that "every observed regularity of connection between phe- 
nomena suggests a question as to whether it is universal." 
There are numerous instances of this in mathematics. For 
example, it is noticed that 1 + 3 = 2 2 , 1 + 3 + 5 = 3 2 , 1+3 + 
5 + 7=4 2 , etc.; and one is led to ask whether there is any 
general principle involved, so that the sum of the first n odd 
numbers will be n 2 , where n is any number, however great. 
In this early form of inductive inference there are two diver- 
gent tendencies. One is the tendency to complete enumera- 
tion. This tendency is clearly ideal — it transcends the facts 
as given. To look for all the cases is thus itself an experi- 
mental inquiry, based upon a hypothesis which it endeavors 
to test. But in most cases enumeration can be only incom- 
plete, and we are able to reach nothing better than proba- 
bility. Hence the other tendency in the direction of an 
analysis of content in search for a principle of connection in 
the elements in any one case. For if a characteristic belong- 
ing to a number of individuals suggests a class where it 
belongs to all individuals, it must be that it is found in 
every individual as such. The hypothesis of complete class 
involves a hypothesis as to the character of each individual 
in the class. Thus a hypothesis as to extension transforms 
itself into one as to intension. 

But it is analogy which Welton considers "the chief 
source from which new hypotheses are drawn." In the 
second tendency mentioned under enumerative induction, 
that is, the tendency to analysis of content or intension, we 
are naturally led to analogy, for in our search for the char- 

i Welton, Manual of Logic, Vol. II, chap. 3. 



172 Studies in Logical Theory 

acteristic feature which determines classification among the 
concrete particulars our first step will be an inference by 
analogy. In analogy attention is turned from the number 
of observed instances to their character, and, because par- 
ticulars have some feature in common, they are supposed to 
be the same in still other respects. While the best we can 
reach in analogy is probability, the arguments may be such 
as to result in a high degree of certainty. The form of the 
argument is valuable in so far as we are able to distinguish 
between essential and nonessential characteristics on which 
to base our analogy. What is essential and what nonessen- 
tial depends upon the particular end we have in view. 

In addition to enumerative induction, which Welton has 
mentioned, it is to be noted that there are a number of other 
processes which are very similar to it in that a number of 
particulars appear to furnish a basis for a general principle 
or method. Such instances are common in induction, in 
instruction, and in methods of proof. 

If one is to be instructed in some new kind of labor, he 
is supposed to acquire a grasp of the method after having 
been shown in a few instances how this particular work is to 
be done; and, if he performs the manipulations himself, so 
much the better. It is not asked why the experience of a 
few cases should be of any assistance, for it seems self- 
evident that an experienced man, a man who has acquired 
the skill, or knack, of doing things, should deal better with 
all other cases of similar nature. 

There is something very similar in inductive proofs, as 
they are called. The inductive proof is common in algebra. 
Suppose we are concerned in proving the law of expansion 
of the binomial theorem. We show by actual calculation 
that, if the law holds good for the nth power, it is true for 
the n -\- first power. That is, if it holds for any power, it 
holds for the next also. But we can easily show that it does 



The Natuke op Hypothesis 173 

hold for, say, the second power. Then it must be true for 
the third, and hence for the fourth, and so on. Whether 
this law, though discovered by inductive processes, depends 
on deduction for the conclusiveness of its proof, as Jevons 
holds; 1 whether, as Erdmann 2 contends, the proof is thor- 
oughly deductive; or whether Wundt 3 is right in maintain- 
ing that it is based on an exact analogy, while the 
fundamental axioms of mathematics are inductive, it is clear 
that in such proofs a few instances are employed to give the 
learner a start in the right direction. Something suggests 
itself, and is found true in this case, in the next, and again 
in the next, and so on. It may be questioned whether there 
is usually a very clear notion of what is involved in the "so 
on." To many it appears to mark the point where, after 
having been taken a few steps, the learner is carried on by 
the acquired momentum somewhat after the fashion of one 
of Newton's laws of motion. Whether the few successive 
steps are an integral part of the proof or merely serve as 
illustration, they are very generally resorted to. In fact, 
they are often employed where there is no attempt to intro- 
duce a general term such as n, or k, or I, but the few indi- 
vidual instances are deemed quite sufficient. Such, for 
instance, is the custom in arithmetical processes. We call 
attention to these facts in order to show that successive 
cases are utilized in the course of explanation as an aid in 
establishing the generality of a law. 

In geometry we find a class of proofs in which the suc- 
cessive steps seem to have great significance. A common 
proof of the area of the circle will serve as a fair example. 
A regular polygon is circumscribed about the circle. Then 
as the number of its sides are increased its area will approach 

i W. S. Jevons, Principles of Science, pp. 231, 232. 

2 B. Ekdmaxn, " Zur Theorie des Syllogismus und der Induktion," Philoso- 
phische Abhandlungen, Vol. VI, p. 230. 

3 Wundt, Logik, 2d ed., Vol. II, p. 131. 



174 Studies in Logical Theory 

that of the circle, as its perimeter approaches the circumfer- 
ence of the circle. The area of the circle is thus inferred to 
be 7rR 2 , since the area of the polygon is always -J J? X perim- 
eter, and in case of the circle the circumference =27rjR. 
Here again we get under such headway by means of the 
polygon that we arrive at the circle with but little difficulty. 
Had we attempted the transition at once, say, from a cir- 
cumscribed square, we should doubtless have experienced 
some uncertainty and might have recoiled from what would 
seem a rash attempt; but as the number of the sides of our 
polygon approach infinity — that mysterious realm where 
many paradoxical things become possible — the transition 
becomes so easy that our polygon is often said to have truly 
become a circle. 

Similarly, some statements of the infinitesimal calculus 
rest on the assumption that slight degrees of difference may 
be neglected. Though the more modern theory of limits 
has largely displaced this attitude in calculus and has also 
changed the method of proof in such geometrical problems 
as the area of the circle, the underlying motive seems to 
have been to make transitions easy, and thus to make possible 
a continued application of some particular method or way of 
dealing with things. 

But granted that this is all true, what has it to do with 
the origin of the hypothesis? It seems likely that the 
hypothesis may be suggested by a few successive instances; 
but are these to be classed with the successive steps in proof 
to which we have referred? In the first place, we attempt 
to prove our hypothesis because we are not sure it is true ; 
we are not satisfied that there are no other tenable hypothe- 
ses. But if we do test it, is not such test enough? It 
depends upon how thorough a grasp we have of the situa- 
tion ; but, in general, each test case adds to its probability. 
The value of tests lies in the fact that they strengthen and 



The Nature of Hypothesis 175 

tend to confirm our hypothesis by checking the force of 
alternatives. One instance is not sufficient because there 
are other possible incipient hypotheses, or more properly 
tendencies, and the enumeration serves to bring one of these 
tendencies into prominence in that it diminishes other vague 
and perhaps subconscious tendencies and strengthens the 
one which suddenly appears as the mysterious product of 
genius. 

The question might arise why the mere repetition of con- 
flicting tendencies would lead to a predominance of one of 
them. Why would they not all remain in conflict and con- 
tinue to check any positive result? It is probably because 
there never is any absolute equilibrium. The successive 
instances tend to intensify and bring into prominence some 
tendency which is already taking a lead, so to speak. And 
it may be said further in this connection that only as seen 
from the outside, only as a mechanical view is taken, does 
there appear to be an excluding of definitely made out alter- 
natives. 

In explanation of the part played by analogy in the origin 
of hypotheses, Welton points out that a mere number of 
instances do not take us very far, and that there must be 
some " specification of the instances as well as numbering of 
them," and goes on to show that the argument by enumera- 
tive induction passes readily into one from analogy, as soon 
as attention is turned from the number of the observed 
instances to their character. It is not necessary, however, 
to pass to analogy through enumerative induction. " When 
the instances presented to observation offer immediately the 
characteristic marks on which we base the inference to the 
connection of S and P, we can proceed at once to an infer- 
ence from analogy, without any preliminary enumeration of 
the instances." 1 

i Welton, Manual of Logic, Vol. II, p. 72. 



176 Studies in Logical Theory 

Welton, and logicians generally, regard analogy as an 
inference on the basis of partial identity. Because of cer- 
tain common features we are led to infer a still greater like- 
ness. 

Both enumerative induction and analogy are explicable 
in terms of habit. We saw in our examination of enume- 
rative induction that a form of reaction gains strength 
through a series of successful applications. Analogy marks 
the presence of an identical element together with the ten- 
dency to extend this "partial identity" (as it is commonly 
called) still farther. In other words, in analogy it is sug- 
gested that a type of reaction which is the same in certain 
respects may be made similar in a greater degree. In enu- 
merative induction we lay stress on the number of instances 
in which the habit is applied. In analogy we emphasize the 
content side and take note of the partial identity. In fact, 
the relation between enumerative induction and analogy is 
of the same sort as that existing between association by con- 
tiguity and association by similarity. In association by 
contiguity we think of the things associated as merely stand- 
ing in certain temporal or spatial relations, and disregard the 
fact that they were elements in a larger experience. In case 
of association by similarity we regard the like feature in the 
things associated as a basis for further correction. 

In conversion of propositions we try to reverse the direc- 
tion of the reaction, so to speak, and thereby to free the habit, 
to get a mode of response so generalized as to act with a 
minimum cue. For instance, we can deal with A in a 
way called B, or, in other words, in the same way that 
we did with other things called B. If we say, "Man is 
an animal," then to a certain extent the term "animal" 
signifies the way in which we regard "man." But the 
question arises whether we can regard all animals as we 
do man. Evidently not, for the reaction which is fitting in 



The Nature of Hypothesis 177 

case of animals would be only partially applicable to man. 
With the animals that are also men we have the beginning 
of a habit which, if unchecked, would lead to a similar reac- 
tion toward all animals, i. e., we would say: "All animals 
are men." Man may be said to be the richer concept, in 
that only a part of the reaction which determines an object 
to be a man is required to designate it as an animal. On 
the other hand, if we start with animal, then (except in case 
of the animals which are men) there is lacking the subject- 
matter which would permit the fuller concept to be applied. 
By supplying the conditions under which animal = man we 
get a reversible habit. The equation of technical science has 
just this character. It represents the maximum freeing or 
abstraction of a predicate qua predicate, and thereby multi- 
plies the possible applications of it to subjects of future 
judgments, and lessens the amount of shearing away of 
irrelevancies and of re-adaptation necessary when so used 
in any particular case. 

Formation and test of the hypothesis. — The formation of 
the hypothesis is commonly regarded as essentially different 
from the process of testing, which it subsequently under- 
goes. We are said to observe facts, invent hypotheses, and 
then test them. The hypothesis is not required for our pre- 
liminary observations; and some writers, regarding the 
hypothesis as a formulation which requires a difficult and 
elaborate test, decline to admit as hypotheses those more 
simple suppositions, which are readily confirmed or rejected. 
A very good illustration of this point of view is met with in 
Wundt's discussion of the hypothesis, by an examination of 
which we hope to show that such distinctions are rather arti- 
ficial than real. 

The subject-matter of science, says Wundt, 1 is constituted 
by that which is actually given and that which is actually to 

iQp. cit., Vol. I, p. 452 flL 



178 Studies in Logical Theory 

be expected. The whole content is not limited to this, 
however, for these facts must be supplemented by certain 
presuppositions, which are not given in a factual sense. 
Such presuppositions are called hypotheses and are justified 
by our fundamental demand for unity. However valuable 
the hypothesis may be when rightly used, there is constant 
danger of illegitimately extending it by additions that spring 
from mere inclinations of fancy. Furthermore, the hypothe- 
sis in this proper scientific sense must be carefully dis- 
tinguished from the various inaccurate uses, which are 
prevalent. For instance, hypotheses must not be confused 
with expectations of fact. As cases in point Wundt men- 
tions Galileo' s suppositions that small vibrations of the 
pendulum are isochronous, and that the space traversed by 
a falling body is proportional to the square of the time it 
has been falling. It is true that such anticipations play an 
important part in science, but so long as they relate to the 
facts themselves or to their connections, and can be con- 
firmed or rejected any moment through observation, they 
should not be classed with those added presuppositions 
which are used to co-ordinate facts. Hence not all supposi- 
tions are hypotheses. On the other hand, not every 
hypothesis can be actually experienced. For example, one 
employs in physics the hypothesis of electric fluid, but does 
not expect actually to meet with it. In many cases, how- 
ever, the hypothesis becomes proved as an experienced fact. 
Such was the course of the Copernican theory, which was at 
first only a hypothesis, but was transformed into fact 
through the evidence afforded by subsequent astronomical 
observation. 

Wundt defines a theory as a hypothesis taken together 
with the facts for whose elucidation it was invented. In 
thus establishing a connection between the facts which the 
hypothesis merely suggested, the theory furnishes at the 



The Nature of Hypothesis 179 

same time partly the foundation (Begrundung) and partly 
the confirmation (Bestdtigung) of the hypothesis. 1 These 
aspects, Wundt insists, must be sharply distinguished. 
Every hypothesis must have its Begrundung, but there can 
be Bestdtigung only in so far as the hypothesis contains 
elements which are accessible to actual processes of verifica- 
tion. In most cases verification is attainable in only cer- 
tain elements of the hypothesis. For example, Newton was 
obliged to limit himself to one instance in the verification of 
his theory of gravitation, viz., the movements of the moon. 
The other heavenly bodies afforded nothing better than a 
foundation in that the supposition that gravity decreases as 
the square of the distance increases enabled him to deduce 
the movements of the planets. The main object of his 
theory, however, lay in the deduction of these movements 
and not in the proof of universal gravity. With the Dar- 
winian theory, on the contrary, the main interest is in seek- 
ing its verification through examination of actual cases of 
development. Thus, while the Newtonian and the greater 
part of the other physical theories lead to a deduction of 
the facts from the hypotheses, which can be verified only 
in individual instances, the Darwinian theory is concerned 
in evolving as far as possible the hypothesis out of the 
facts. 

Let us look more closely at Wundt' s position. We will 
ask, first, whether the distinction between hypotheses and 
expectations is as pronounced as he maintains; and, second, 
whether the relation between Begriindung and Bestdtigung 
may not be closer than Wundt would have us believe. 

As examples of the hypothesis Wundt mentions the 
Copernican hypothesis, Newton's hypothesis of gravitation, 
and the predictions of the astronomers which led to the dis- 
covery of Neptune. As examples of mere expectations we 

1 Op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 454-461. 



180 Studies in Logical Theoey 

are referred to Galileo's experiments with falling bodies and 
pendulums. In case of Newton's hypothesis there was the 
assumption of a general law, which was verified after much 
labor and delay. The heliocentric hypothesis of Coperni- 
cus, which was invented for the purpose of bringing system 
and unity into the movements of the planets, has also been 
fairly well substantiated. In the discovery of Neptune we 
have, apparently, not the proof of a general law or the dis- 
covery of further peculiarities of previously known data, but 
rather the discovery of a new object or agent by means of 
its observed effects. In each of these instances we admit 
that the hypothesis was not readily suggested or easily 
and directly tested. 

If we turn to Galileo's pendulum and falling bodies, it is 
clear first of all that he did not have in mind the discovery 
of some object, as was the case in the discovery of Neptune. 
Did he, then, either contribute to the proof of a general law 
or discover further characteristics of things already known 
in a more general way ? Wundt tells us that Galileo only 
determined a little more exactly what he already knew, and 
that he did this with but little labor or delay. 

What, then, is the real difference between hypothesis and 
expectation? If we compare Galileo's determination of the 
law of falling bodies with Newton's test of his hypothesis of 
gravitation, we see that both expectation and hypothesis 
were founded on observation and took the form of mathe- 
matical formulas. Each tended to confirm the general law 
expressed in its formula, though there was, of course, much 
difference in the time and labor required. If we compare 
the Copernican hypothesis with Galileo's supposition con- 
cerning the pendulum, we find again that they agree in 
regard to general purpose and method, and differ in the 
difficulty of verification. If the experiment with the pen- 
dulum only substituted exactness for inexactness, did the 



The Nature of Hypothesis 181 

Copernican theory do anything different in kind f It is true 
that the more exact statement of the swing of the pendulum* 
was expressed in quantitative form, but quantitative state- 
ment is no criterion of either the presence or the absence of 
the hypothesis. 

Again, we may compare the pendulum with Kepler's laws. 
What was Kepler's hypothesis, that the square of the periodic 
times of the several planets are proportional to the cubes of 
their mean distances from the sun, except a more exact for- 
mulation of facts which were already known in a more gen- 
eral way? Wundt's position seems to be this: whenever a 
supposition or suggestion can be tested readily, it should 
not be classed as a hypothesis. This would make the dis- 
tinction one of degree rather than kind, and it does not 
appear how much labor we must expend, or how long our 
supposition must evade our efforts to test it, before it can 
win the title of hypothesis. 

In the second place, we have seen that Wundt draws a 
sharp line between Begrilndung and Bestdtigung. It is 
doubtless true that every hypothesis requires a certain justi- 
fication, for unless other facts can be found which agree 
with deductions made in accordance with it, its only sup- 
port would be the data from which it is drawn. Such sup- 
port as this would be obtained through a process too clearly 
circular to be seriously entertained. The distinction which 
Wundt draws between Begrilndung and Bestdtigung is 
evidently due to the presence of the experimental element 
in the latter. For descriptive purposes this distinction is 
useful, but is misleading if it is understood to mean that 
there is mere experience in one case and mere inference in the 
other. The difference is rather due to the relative parts played 
by inference and by accepted experience in each. In Begriln- 
dung the inferential feature is the more prominent, while in 
Bestdtigung the main emphasis is on the experiential aspect. 



182 Studies in Logical Theory 

It must not be supposed, however, that either of these 
aspects can be wholly absent. It is difficult to understand 
how any hypothesis can be entertained at all unless it meets 
in some measure the demand with reference to which it was 
invented, viz., a unification of conflicts in experience. And, 
in so far, it is confirmed. The motive which casts doubt 
upon its adequacy is the same that leads to its re-forming 
as a hypothesis, as a mental concept. 

The difficulties in Wundt's position are thus due to a 
failure to take account of the reconstructive nature of the 
judgment. The predicate, supposition, or hypothesis, what- 
ever we may choose to call it, is formed because of the check 
of a former habit. The judgment is an ideal application of 
a new habit, and its test is the attempt to act in accordance 
with this ideal reconstruction. It must not be thought, how- 
ever, that our supposition is first fully developed and then 
tried and accepted or rejected without modification. On 
the contrary, its growth is the result of successive minor 
tests and corresponding minor modifications in its form. 
Formation and test are merely convenient distinctions in a 
larger process in which forming, testing, and re-forming go 
on together. The activity of experimental verification is not 
only a testing, a confirming or weakening of the validity of 
a hypothesis, but it is equally well an evolution of the mean- 
ing of the hypothesis through bringing it into closer rela- 
tions with specific data not previously included in defining 
its import. Per contra, a purely reflective and deductive 
consideration which develops the idea as hypothesis, in 
so far as it introduces the determinateness of previously 
accepted facts within the scope, comprehension, or intension 
of the idea, is in so far forth, a verification. 

If the view which we have maintained is correct, the hypo- 
thesis is not to be limited to those elaborate formulations of 
the scientist which he seeks to confirm by crucial tests. The 



The Nature of Hypothesis 183 

hypothesis of the investigator differs from the comparatively 
rough conjecture of the plain man only in its greater preci- 
sion. Indeed, as we have attempted to show, the hypothesis 
is not a method which we may employ or not as we choose; 
on the contrary, as predicate of the judgment it is present 
in a more or less explicit form if we judge at all. Whether 
the time and labor required for its confirmation or rejection 
is a matter of a lifetime or a moment, its nature remains the 
same. Its function is identical with that of the predicate. 
In short, the hypothesis is the predicate so brought to con- 
sciousness and defined that those features which are not 
noticed in the ordinary judgment are brought into promi- 
nence. We then recognize the hypothesis to be what in 
fact the predicate always is, viz., a method of organization 
and control. 



VIII 

IMAGE AND IDEA IN LOGIC 

The logic of sense-impressions and of ideas as copies of 
sense-impressions has had its day. It engaged in a conflict 
with dogmatism, and scored a decisive victory. It over- 
threw the dynasty of prescribed formulae and innate ideas, 
of ideas derived ready-made from custom and social usage, 
ancient enough to be lost in the remote obscurity of divine 
sources; and enthroned in their place ideas derived from, 
and representative of, the sense -experiences of a very real 
and present world. It marked a reaction from dogma back 
to the original meaning of dogma, back to the seeming, the 
appearance, of things. So thoroughly did Bacon and Hobbes, 
Locke and Hume, to mention only these four, do their work, 
that many of the problems growing out of the conflict itself, 
to say nothing of the scholastic traditions that were com- 
bated, have come to have merely a historical rather than a 
logical interest. Logic no longer concerns itself very 
eagerly with the content or sensuous qualities of ideas, with 
their derivation from sense-impressions, or with questions as 
to the relation of copy to original, of representative to that 
which is presented. It is concerned rather with the con- 
structive operations of thought, with meaning, reference to 
reality, inference — with intellectual processes. Perhaps in 
no respect is this shifting of logical standpoint indicated 
more clearly than in the unregretf ul way with which the old 
logical interest in the sense-qualities of ideas is now made 
over to psychology. States of consciousness as such, we are 
told, are the proper study of psychology ; whereas logic con- 
cerns itself with the relation of thought to its object. True, 

184 



Image and Idea in Logic 185 

these states of consciousness include thought-states, as well 
as sense-impressions ; ideas and concepts, as well as feelings 
and fancies; and the business of psychology is to observe, 
compare and classify, describe and chronicle, these states 
and whatever else is carried along in the stream of conscious- 
ness. But logic is concerned, not with these states of con- 
sciousness per se, least of all with the flotsam and jetsam of 
the stream, but with its reference to reality; not with the 
true, but with truth; not even with what consciousness does, 
but with how consciousness is to outdo itself, transcend itself, 
in a rational and universal whole. Even an empirical logic 
has to arrange somehow the way to get from one sense- 
impression to another. 

In drawing this distinction between logic and psychology 
— a distinction which virtually amounts to a separation — two 
things are overlooked: first, that the distinction itself is a 
logical distinction, and may properly constitute a problem 
falling under the province of logical inquiry and theory; 
and, second, that the rather arbitrary and official setting 
apart of psychology to look after the task of studying states 
of consciousness does not carry with it the guarantee that 
psychology will confine itself exclusively to that task. This 
last point in particular must be my excuse for discussing the 
question of image and idea from the psychological rather 
than from the logical standpoint. The logic of ideas derived 
from sense-impressions has had its day. But even the very 
leavings of the past may have been gathered up and recon- 
structed by psychology in such a way as to anticipate some 
of the newer developments of logical theory and meet some 
of its difficulties. One can hardly hope to justify in advance 
a discussion based on such a sheer possibility. Let us begin, 
rather, by noting down from the standpoint of logic some of 
the distinctions between image and idea, and the estimate 
of the logical function and value of mental imagery, and see 



186 Studies in Logical Theoey 

in what direction they take us and whether they suggest a 
resort to an analysis from the standpoint of psychology. 

Proceeding from the standpoint of logic to inquire into 
the logical function of mental imagery and into the distinc- 
tion between image and idea, we shall come upon two 
opposed but characteristic answers. If the inquiry be 
directed to a member of the empirical school of logic, he 
would be bound to answer in the affirmative, so far as the 
question regarding the function of mental imagery is con- 
cerned. He would be likely to say, if he were loyal to the 
traditions of his school, that mental imagery is the counter- 
part of sense-perception, and is thus the representative of the 
data with which empirical logic is concerned. Mental 
imagery, he would continue, is a representative in a literal 
sense, a copy, a reflection, of what comes to us through the 
avenues of sensation. True, it is not the perfect twin of 
sense-experience ; else we could not tell them apart ; indeed, 
there are times when the copy becomes so much like the 
original that we are deceived by it, as in dreams or in 
hallucinations. Ordinarily, however, we are able to distin- 
guish one from the other. Two criteria are usually present ; 
(1) imagery is fainter, more fleeting, than the corresponding 
sense-experience; and (2), save in the case of accurate 
memory-images, it is subject to a more or less arbitrary 
rearrangement of its parts, as when, for example, we make 
over the images of scenes we have actually experienced, to 
furnish forth the setting of some remote historical event. 

Barring, or controlling and rectifying, its tendencies 
toward both arbitrary and constructive variations from 
the original, mental imagery is on the same level as 
sense-experience, and serves the same logical purpose. 
That is to say, it contributes to the data which consti- 
tute the foundations of empirical logic. It furnishes mate- 
rials for the operations of observing, comparing, abstracting 



Image and Idea in Logic 187 

and generalizing. Mental imagery helps to piece out the 
fragments that may be presented to sense-experience. It 
supplies the entire anatomy when only a single bone, say, 
is actually given. Yet, however useful as a servant of truth, 
it has to be carefully watched, lest its spontaneous tendency 
to vary the actual order and coexistence of data lead the 
investigator astray. The copy it presents is, after all, a 
temporary makeshift, until it can be shown to correspond 
point for point to the now absent reality. Mental imagery 
furnishes one with an illustrated edition of the book of 
nature, but the illustrations await the confirmation of com- 
parison with the originals. 

Mental imagery functions logically when it extends the 
area of data beyond the range of the immediate sense-per- 
ceptions of any given time, and thus makes possible a more 
comprehensive application of the empirical methods of 
observation, comparison, abstraction, and generalization. It 
functions logically when it acts as a feeder of logical 
machinery, though it is not indispensable to this machinery 
and does not modify its principles. The logical mill could 
grind up in the same way the pure grain of sense-percep- 
tions, unmixed with mental images, but it would have to 
grind more slowly for lack of material. In other words, 
empirical logic could carry on its operations of observing, 
comparing, abstracting, and generalizing, solely on the basis 
of objects or data present to the senses, and with no exten- 
sion of this basis in terms of imagery, or copies of objects 
not immediately present ; but it would take more time for it 
to apply and carry through its operations. The logical 
machinery is the same in each case. The materials fed and 
the product issuing are the same in each case. Imagery 
simply fulfils the function of providing a more copious grist. 

The empiricist's answer to our question regarding the 
logical function of mental imagery leaves that function in an 



188 Studies in Logical Theory 

uncertain and parlous state. Imagery lacks the security of 
sense-perception on the one hand, and it has no part in the 
operation of thought on the other. It is a sort of hod-car- 
rier, whose function it is to convey the raw materials of 
sense-perception to a more exalted position where someone 
else does all the work. I suppose this could be called a 
functional interpretation of a logical element. The ques- 
tion, then, would be whether an element so functioning is 
in any sense logical. As an element lying outside of the 
thought-process it owes no responsibility to logic; it is not 
amenable to its regulations. Thought simply finds it expe- 
dient to operate with an agent over which it has no intrinsic 
control. The case might be allowed to rest here. Yet were 
this extra-logical element of imagery to abandon thought, 
all conscious thinking as opposed to sense -perception would 
cease. A false alarm, perhaps. Imagery may be so consti- 
tuted that it is inseparably subordinated to thought and can 
never abandon it. Thought may simply exude imagery. 
But imagery somehow has to represent sense-perception, 
also. It can hardly be a secretion of thought and a copy of 
sense-perceptions at one and the same time, unless the 
empiricist is willing to turn absolute idealist ! Before tak- 
ing such a desperate plunge as this, it might be desirable to 
see whether there is any other recourse. 

There is another and a very different answer to the ques- 
tion regarding the logical function of mental imagery. To 
distinguish this answer from that of the associationist or 
empiricist, I will call it the answer of the conceptualist. I 
am not at all positive that this label would stick even to 
those to whom it might be applied with considerable justifi- 
cation. The terms " rationalistic " and " transcendental " 
might be preferred in opposition to the term "empirical." 
And we have the term " apperceptionist " in opposition to 
the term " associationist." If the term "conceptualist" is 



Image and Idea in Logic 189 

admissible, it should be brought down to date, perhaps, by 
making it "neo-conceptualist." The present difficulties 
regarding terminology would be eased considerably if we 
only had a convenient set of derivatives made from the word 
" meaning." Since we have not, I will use derivatives made 
from the word "concept" to denote views opposite to those 
held by the empirical school. 

The concept ualist could be depended upon to answer our 
question in the negative. Logical functions begin where 
the image leaves off. They begin with the idea, with mean- 
ing. The conceptualist distinguishes sharply between the 
image as a psychical existence and the idea, or concept, as 
logical meaning. On the one hand, you have the "image," 
not only as a mere psychical existence, but a mocking exist- 
ence at that, fleeting, inconstant, shifting, never perhaps 
twice alike; yet, mind you, an existence, a fact — that must 
be admitted. On the other hand, you have the " idea," with 
"a fixed content or logical meaning," 1 which is referred by 
an act of judgment to a reality beyond the act. 2 

The "idea," the logical meaning, begins where the 
"image" leaves off. Does this mean that the "idea" is 
wholly independent of the "image"? Yes and no. The 
" idea " is independent of that which is ordinarily regarded 
as the special characteristic of an "image," namely, its 
quality, its sense-content. That is to say, the "idea" is 
independent of any particular " image," any special embodi- 
ment of sense-content. Any image will do. As Mr. Bosan- 
quet remarks in comparing the psychical images that pass 
through our minds to a store of signal flags : 

Not only is it indifferent whether your signal flag of today is 
the same bit of cloth that you hoisted yesterday, but also, no one 
knows or cares whether it is clean or dirty, thick or thin, frayed or 

1 Bosanquet, Logic, Vol. I, p. 46. 

2 Bradley, Principles of Logic, p. 10. 



190 Studies in Logical Theory 

smooth, as long as it is distinctly legible as an element of the sig- 
nal code. Part of its content, of its attributes and relations, is a 
fixed index which carries a distinct reference; all the rest is 
nothing to us, and, except in a moment of idle curiosity, we are 
unaware that it exists. 1 

On the other hand, the "idea" could not operate as an 
idea, could not be in consciousness, save as it involves some 
imagery, however old, dirty, thin, and frayed. Take the 
statement, "The angles of a triangle are equal to two right 
angles." If the statement means anything to a given indi- 
vidual, if it conveys an idea, it must necessarily involve some 
form of imagery, some qualitative or conscious content. 
But so far as the meaning is concerned, it is a matter of 
complete indifference as to what qualities are involved. 
These qualities may be in terms of visual, auditory, tactual, 
kinesthetic, or verbal imagery. The individual may visual- 
ize a blackboard drawing of a triangle with its sides pro- 
duced, or he may imagine himself to be generating a 
triangle while revolving through an angle of 180°. Any 
imagery anyone pleases may be employed, so long as there 
goes with it somehow the idea of the relation of equality 
between the angles of a triangle and two right angles. But 
the conceptualist does not stop here. The act of judgment 
comes in to affirm that the " idea " is no mere idea, but is a 
quality of the real. " The act [of judgment] attaches the 
floating adjective [the idea, the logical meaning] to the 
nature of the world, and, at the same time, tells one it was 
there already." 2 The "idea," the logical meaning, begins 
where the " image " leaves off. Yet, somehow, the "idea" 
could not begin, unless there were an " image " to leave off. 
An "image" is not an "idea," says the conceptualist. 
An "idea" is not an "image." (1) An "image" is not an 
"idea," because an "image" is a particular, individual frag - 

i Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 74. 2 Bradley, Principles of Logic, p. 11. 



Image and Idea in Logic 191 

ment of consciousness. It is so bound up with its own 
existence that it cannot reach out to the existence of an 
"idea," or to anything beyond itself. Chemically speaking, 
it is an avalent atom of consciousness, if such a thing is 
thinkable. Mr. Bosanquet raises the question: 

Are there at all ideas which are not symbolic? .... The 
answer is that (a) in judgment itself the idea can be distinguished 
qua particular in time or psychical fact, and so far is not sym- 
bolic ; and (b) in all those human experiences from which we draw 
our conjectures as to the animal intelligence, when in languor or 
in ignorance image succeeds image without conscious judgment, we 
feel what it is to have ideas as facts and not as symbols. 1 

(2) An " idea" is not an "image," because an idea is mean- 
ing, which consists in a part of the content of the image, 
cut off, and considered apart from the existence of the con- 
tent or sign itself. 2 This meaning, this fragment of 
psychical existence, lays down all claim to existence on its 
own account, that it may refer through an act of judgment 
to a reality beyond itself and beyond the act also. An 
" image " is not an " idea " and an "idea " is not an 
"image," because an "image" exists only as a quality, a 
sense -content, whereas an " idea " exists only as a relation, 
a reference to reality beyond. " On the one hand," to recall 
Bradley's antinomy, "no possible idea [as a psychical 

image] can be that which it means On the other 

hand, no idea [as logical signification] is anything but just 
what it means." 

There is a significant point of agreement between the 
conceptualist and the empiricist. Both regard imagery as 
on the level with sense -perception. For the empiricist, as 
we have seen, the fact that imagery may be compelled to 
serve as a yoke-fellow of sense-experience constitutes its 
logical value. For the conceptualist, however, the associa- 

1 Op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 75, 76. 2 Bbadeey, op. cit., pp. 4-6. 



192 Studies in Logical Theory 

tion of imagery with sense-experience is of no logical conse- 
quence whatsoever, save as it may help to intensify the 
distinction between imagery and meaning. To quote again 
from Bradley : 

For logical purposes the psychological distinction of idea and 
sensation may be said to be irrelevant, while the distinction of idea 
and fact is vital. The image, or psychological idea, is for logic 
nothing but a sensible reality. It is on a level with the mere sen- 
sations of the senses. For both are facts and neither are meanings. 
Neither are cut from a mutilated presentation and fixed as a con- 
nection. Neither are indifferent to their place in the stream of 
psychical events, their time and their relations to the presented 
congeries. Neither are adjectives to be referred from their exist- 
ence, to live on strange soils, under other skies, and through 
changing seasons. The lives of both are so entangled with their 
environment, so one with their setting of sensuous particulars, that 
their character is destroyed if but one thread is broken. 1 

This point of agreement between conceptualism and 
empiricism, this placing of imagery and sense-experience on 
a common level, serves to bring into relief fundamental dif- 
ferences between the two schools of thought; fundamental, 
because they have to do with the nature of reality itself. 
The conceptualist in his zealous endeavor to distinguish 
between imagery and logical meaning has come perilously 
near driving imagery into the arms of reality. It is the 
opportunity of empiricism to make them one. How can 
conceptualism prevent the union? Has it not disarmed 
itself ? The act of judgment, which includes within itself 
logical meaning as predicate, refers to a reality beyond the 
act. Both imagery and reality, then, lie outside of the act 
of judgment ! What alliance, or mesalliance, may they not 
form, one with the other? 

The difficulties we have noted thus far in the discussion 
are due to a large extent, I believe, to incomplete psychologi- 

1 Op. cit., pp. 7, 8. 



Image and Idea in Logic 193 

cal analysis of logical machinery. The empiricist has not 
carried the psychology of logic as far as the conceptualist, 
although the latter might be the loudest to disclaim the 
honor. I will not try to prove this statement, but simply 
give it as a reason why, in the interest of brevity, I shall 
pass with little comment over the psychological shortcomings 
and contributions of empirical logic, and devote what space 
remains to the psychology implicitly worked out by con- 
ceptual logic, and to its possible development, with special 
reference, of course, to the problem of the logical function 
of imagery. 

The logical distinction, which practically amounts to a 
separation between imagery and meaning, is the counterpart of 
the psychological distinction between stimulus and response, 
between the two poles of sensori-motor activity, where the 
stimulus is denned in consciousness in the form of imagery, 
in the form of sense-qualities centrally excited, and where 
the response is directed and controlled via this imagery, so 
as to function in bringing some end, project, purpose, or 
ideal, nearer to realization, some problem nearer to solution. 

Psychologically, there is no break between image and 
response, between thought and action. The stimulus is a 
condition of action, in both senses of the ambiguity of the 
word "condition." (1) It is action; it is a state or condi- 
tion of action. (2) It is also an initiation of action. If the 
appropriate stimulus, then the desired action. The response 
to an image is the meaning of the image. Or, the response 
to any stimulus via an image — mediated, controlled or 
directed by an image — is the meaning of that image. The 
less imagery involved in any response, the greater the pre- 
sumption in favor of the belief that the response is either 
an instinctive impulse or else has become a habit of mind, an 
adequate idea. The reduction and loss of sense-content 
which an image may undergo — the wearing away of an 



194 Studies in Logical Theory 

image, it is sometimes called — is not a sign that this sense- 
content has no logical function ; but rather that it has fulfilled 
a logical function so well that it has made part of itself use- 
less. The husk, to recall one of Mr. Bradley's comparisons, 
that useless husk, tends to fall away, to lapse from conscious- 
ness, after it has served the purpose of helping to bring the 
kernel of truth to fruition. 

This raises again the original question as to whether the 
sense-content, the quality, the existential quality, of an 
image has a logical function. I will ask first whether it has 
a function from the standpoint of psychology. We will 
agree with the empiricist that the content of an image is 
representative, that it is a return, a revival, of a sense-content 
previously experienced through the activity of sense-organs 
stimulated from the periphery. What is the function, then, 
of the representative image ? Sensation, quality, as we have 
implied above, is the stimulus come to consciousness. To 
explain how a stimulus can "come" to consciousness is a 
problem I will not attempt to go into here. I assume as a 
fact that there are times when we know what we are about ; 
when we are conscious of the stimuli, or conditions of action, 
which are tending in this direction or in that, and when 
through this consciousness we exercise a controlling influence 
over action by selecting and reinforcing certain stimuli and 
suppressing or inhibiting others. It is true that we do not 
always realize to how great an extent our actions are con- 
trolled by stimuli which do not come to consciousness, by 
reflexes, instincts, and habits which do not rise above the 
threshold of imagery. And when this vast complex of hid- 
den machinery is partly revealed to us, it may either cause 
the beholder to take a materialistic, mechanical, or fatalistic 
view of existence, to say that we are the victims of our own 
machinery, or else it may induce the other extreme of more 
or less mystic pronouncements regarding the province of the 



Image and Idea in Logic 195 

subconscious, of the subliminal self; thus out of partial 
views, out of half-truths, metaphysical problems arise and 
arm for mutual conflict. Nevertheless, there is a presump- 
tion, amounting in most minds to a conviction, that we do 
at times consciously control some of our actions. And it is 
only making this conviction a little more explicit to say that 
we consciously control our actions through becoming aware 
of the stimuli, or conditions of action, and through selecting 
and reinforcing them. 

Is it begging the question to speak of consciousness as 
exercising a selective function with reference to stimuli? 
From the standpoint of psychology, I cannot see that it is. 
No characteristic of consciousness has been more clearly 
made out, both reflectively and experimentally, than its. 
selective function, than its ability to pick out and intensify 
within certain limits the stimuli or conditions of action. 

The representational image is a stimulus come to con- 
sciousness in the same way that a sensation is a stimulus 
come to consciousness. It is both a direct and an indirect 
stimulus. The terms "direct" and "indirect" are used as 
relative solely to the demands of the particular situation out 
of which they arise. By direct stimulus I mean a stimulus 
which initiates with almost no appreciable delay the response 
or attitude appropriate to the demands of a given situation, 
bridging the difficulties, removing the obstacles, or solving 
the problem with the minimum of conscious reflection. As 
an image becomes more and more of a working symbol, an 
idea, it tends to become simply a direct stimulus. 

By an "indirect stimulus" is meant a stimulus initiating 
a response which, if not inhibited, would be irrelevant to the 
situation, yet which may represent stimuli which are not 
found in the immediate field of sense-perception, and which 
are essential to the carrying on of the activity. The situa- 
tion is a problematic one, Acquired habits or mental 



196 Studies in Logical Theory 

adjustments break down at some point or fail to operate 
smoothly, either owing to the absence of customary stimuli 
or to the presence of new and untried conditions of action. 
Part of the stress of meeting such a situation as this falls on 
the side of discovering appropriate stimuli and part on the 
side of developing out of habits already acquired new 
methods of response. 

In such a situation as this, imagery may function on the 
side of stimulus when, taking its cue from the stimuli which 
are actually present, and which grow out of the strain and 
friction, it represents the missing conditions of action suffi- 
ciently to direct a search for them. It projects a map, so to 
speak, in which the fragmentary conditions immediately 
present to sense-perception may find their bearings, or in 
which in some way the missing members may be discovered. 
A familiar instance of this would be the experience one 
sometimes has in trying to recall the forgotten name of an 
acquaintance. The images of scenes associated with the 
acquaintance, of various letters and sounds of words associ- 
ated with his name, which may be called to mind, do not 
function so much as direct stimuli as they do as intermediate 
or indirect stimuli. It is a case of casting about for the 
image that will function as a direct stimulus in bringing an 
acquired but temporarily lost adjustment into play. 

Image functions on the side of response, on the side of 
developing new habits, new forms of adjustment, in so far as 
the conditions of action which it represents, or projects, are 
not the actual conditions of action, either because they are 
so inaccessible as to demand development of new habits for 
purposes of attaining them, or else because, though actually 
present, they stimulate relatively uncontrolled aesthetic or 
emotional responses, whose very expression, however, may 
be translated into a demand for more adequate, intelligent, 
controlled habits or adjustments. The conscious projection 



Image and Idea in Logic 197 

of the unattained, even of the unattainable, not only marks 
a certain degree of attainment, but is the initiation of fur- 
ther development. Here we see again that a stimulus is a 
condition of action in both senses of the ambiguity of the 
word "condition." It is both a state or condition of activity, 
and an initiation or condition of further activity. 

As an indirect stimulus growing out of a problematic sit- 
uation imagery necessarily brings in more or less irrelevant 
material. If I may be permitted the paradox, imagery 
would not be relevant if it did not bring in the irrelevant. 
The novelty of the situation makes it impossible to say in 
advance what will be relevant. Hence the demand for range 
and play of imagery. It is only the successful adjustment 
finally hit upon and worked out that is the test of the rele- 
vancy of the imagery which anticipated it. Even this test 
may be unfair, since it is likely to discount the value of 
imagery which is now ruled out, but which may have been 
indispensable in turning up the proper cues in the course of 
the process of reflection and experiment. 

To restate the point in regard to the psychological func- 
tion of imagery. Imagery functions in representing control 
as ideal, not as fact. It represents a possible process of 
reconstructing adjustments and habits; it is not an actual 
and complete readjustment. It arises normally in a stress, 
in the presence of fresh demands and new problems. It 
looks forward in every possible direction, because it is 
important and difficult to foresee consequences. But sup- 
pose the new adjustment to be made with reasonable success — 
reasonable, note. Suppose the ideal to be realized. With 
practice the adjustment becomes less problematic, more 
under control — that is, it comes to require less conscious 
attention to bring it about. The image loses some of its 
sensuous content. It becomes worn away, more remote, 
until at last it becomes respectably vague and abstract 



198 Studies in Logical Theory 

enough to be classed as a concept. Imagery is the stimulus 
of the reconstructive process between habit and habit, con- 
cept and concept, idea and idea. 

We now return to the original question regarding the 
logical function of imagery. There is only one condition, I 
believe, on which we can accept the assumption of both 
empiricist and conceptualist that imagery is on the same 
level with sense-perception, and that is the assumption that 
meaning, logical meaning, is on the same level with habit, 
habit naming the more obvious, overt forms of response to 
stimuli, logical meaning naming the more internal forms of 
response or reference. Psychical response and logical ref- 
erence thus become equivalent terms. 

We have seen that imagery may exercise two functions 
with reference to habit, as direct and as indirect stimulus ; so 
also with reference to logical meaning, imagery may be the 
stimulus to a direct reference of the idea to reality, or it may 
present, or mirror, conditions with regard to which some 
new meaning is to be worked out. The quality, the sense- 
content, of imagery may per se suffice directly to arouse a 
habitual attitude, to call forth an immediate reference to 
reality. It may cause one to "tumble" to what is taking 
place, to "catch on," to apprehend (pardon these expressions 
for the sake of their description of the motor aspect of 
meaning), as when we say, for example: "It came over me 
like a flash what I was to do, and I did it " Our more 
abstract and complicated forms of judgment and reasoning, 
in which the imagery involved is reduced to the minimum 
of conscious, qualitative content, are of the same order, 
though at the other extreme, so far as immediate overt 
expression is concerned. We are working along lines of 
habitual activity so familiar that we can work almost in the 
dark. We need no elaborate imagery. Guided only by the 
waving of a signal flag or by the shifting gleam of a sema- 



Image and Idea in Logic 199 

phore, we thread our way swiftly through the maze of tracks 
worn smooth by use and habit. But suppose a new line of 
habit is to be constructed. No signal flags or semaphores 
will suffice. A detailed survey of the proposed route must 
be had, and here is where imagery with a rich and varied 
yet flexible sensuous content, growing out of previous sur- 
veys, may function in projecting and anticipating the new 
set of conditions, and thus become the stimulus of a new 
line of habit, of a new and more far-reaching meaning. As 
this new line of habit, of meaning, gets into working order 
with the rest of the system, imagery tends normally to 
decline again to the role of signal flags and semaphores. 

The distinction in logical theory between "image" and 
"idea" which we have been considering is only a half-truth 
from the point of view of psychology. It virtually limits 
the "idea" to a fixed, unalterable reference of a fragment 
of a desiccated image to a reality beyond. It indifferently 
loses the play and richness of imagery to the floating rem- 
nants of sense-content, or to an external reality. It limits 
itself to an examination of a final stage in thinking, a stage 
in which the image acts as a direct stimulus, a stage in 
which the sense-content of the image has little or no func- 
tion per se, because this content now initiates directly a 
habitual adjustment, a worked-out and established adapta- 
tion of means to end. It overlooks the process of conscious 
reflection which logically precedes every such adjustment 
not purely instinctive or accidental, a process in which 
imagery as representational functions indirectly in bringing 
the resources of past experience, the fund of acquired habits, 
to bear upon the fragmentary and problematic elements of 
sense-experience actually present, thus maintaining the flow 
and continuity of experience. It fails to recognize that in 
the inseparable association of meaning with quality, of 
k 'idea" with "image," there goes the possibility of working 



200 Studies in Logical Theory 

out and applying new meanings from old, of developing 
deeper meanings, of testing and affirming more inclusive 
and universal meaning. 

We are confronted with this alternative. Either the 
image has a logical function in virtue of its sense-content, or 
else the image functions logically merely as a symbol, the 
sense-content of which is a matter of complete logical indif- 
ference. According to the empiricist, the former is the case, 
according to the conceptualist, the latter. The empiricist 
would say that he needs the image to piece out the data upon 
which logical processes operate. Having met this need, the 
image is retired from active service. For the empiricist the 
processes of thought, observing, comparing, generalizing, 
etc., are as independent of the data they use as, for the 
conceptualist, logical meaning, reference, and "idea" are 
independent of the sense-content of the "image." In reality 
he agrees with the conceptualist in excluding the sense- 
content of the image from the processes of thought, and 
hence from the domain of logic. 

From the standpoint of psychological theory the concep- 
tualist is an improvement over the empiricist. He has gone 
a step farther in the analysis of thought-processes by show- 
ing that they are bound up with some kind of imagery, 
however irrelevant, inconsequential, and worn down the 
sense-quality of that imagery may be. His statement of 
ideas as references to reality lends itself readily, as we have 
seen, to the unitary conception in psychology of ideo-motor, 
or sensori-motor, activity. But is this where logical theory 
is to stop, while psychology as a study of "states of con- 
sciousness" takes up the unfinished tale and carries it for- 
ward? It seems hardly possible, unless logic is willing to 
give over its task of thinking about thinking. 

Reduce the image to a mere symbol. Let its sense- 
quality be a matter of complete indifference. What have 



Image and Idea in Logic 201 

you, then, but an elementary and primitive type of reflex 
action? It is of no particular consequence even from what 
sense-organ it appears to proceed, or whether it appears to 
be peripherally or centrally excited. It is simply a case of 
feel and act ; touch and go. Is this thinking ? It may be 
regarded as either the germ or the finality of thinking, but 
what most of us are inclined to believe is the true subject- 
matter of logic is not to be limited to a simple reflex, or 
even to a chain of reflexes. It is something more complex, 
even if nothing more than an intricate tangle of chains of 
reflexes. 

The complexity of the process called thinking does not 
reside alone in the instinctive or habitual reflexes involved. 
The more instinctive and habitual any adjustment may be, 
the less is it a matter of thought, as everyone knows, although 
its biological complexity is none the less patent to one who 
looks at it from the outside. The complexity of the thinking 
process resides in consciousness also ; it resides in the imagery, 
the stimuli, the mere symbols, if you like, that have "come" 
to consciousness. As soon as the complexity begins to be 
felt, as soon as any discrimination whatsoever begins to be 
introduced or appreciated, at that instant the sense-content, 
the quale, of imagery begins to have a logical function. 
Conscious discrimination, however vague and evanescent, 
and the logical function of the quale of imagery are born 
together, unless one chooses to regard the more obvious and 
deliberate forms of conscious discrimination as more charac- 
teristic of a logical process. It is only as the sense-contents 
of various images are discriminated and compared that any- 
thing like thinking can be conceived to go on. The particular 
sense-content of an image, instead of being a matter of logical 
indifference, is the condition, the possibility, of thinking. 

The conceptualist has contributed to the data of descriptive 
psychology by calling attention, by implication at least, to 



202 Studies in Logical Theoky 

the remote and reduced character of the imagery which may 
characterize thinking. But it by no means follows that the 
more remote and reduced the sense-content of an image 
becomes, the less important is that sense -content for thinking, 
the less demand for discrimination. On the contrary, the 
sense-content that remains may be of supreme logical impor- 
tance. It may be the quintessence of meaning. It may be 
the conscious factor which, when discriminated from another 
almost equally sublimated conscious factor, may determine a 
whole course of action. The delicacy and rapidity with 
which these reduced forms of imagery as they hover about 
the margin of consciousness or flit across its focus are dis- 
criminated and caught, are points in the technique of that 
long art of thinking, begun in early childhood. The fact 
that questionnaire investigations — like that of Gralton's, for 
example — have in many instances failed to discover in the 
minds of scientists and advanced thinkers a rich and varied 
furniture of imagery does not argue the poverty of imagery 
in such minds; it argues, rather, a highly developed tech- 
nique, a species of virtuosity, with reference to the sense- 
content of the types of imagery actually in use. 

To push a step farther the alternative we have already 
stated in a preliminary way: Either the " idea," or "logical 
meaning," lies outside of the process of thinking, as a mere 
impulse or reflex; or else, in virtue of the sense-content of 
its "image," it enters into that conscious process of dis- 
crimination, comparison, and selection, of light and shade, 
of doubt and inquiry, which constitutes the evolution of a 
judgment, which makes the life-history of a movement of 
thought 



IX 

THE LOGIC OF THE PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY 1 

It is not the purpose of this study to show that the Pre- 
Socratics possessed a system of logic which is now for the 
first time brought to the notice of the modern world. Indeed, 
there is nothing to indicate that they had reflected on men- 
tal processes in such a way as to call for an organized body 
of canons regulating the forms of concepts and conclusions. 
Aristotle attributed the discovery of the art of dialectic to 
Zeno the Eleatic, and we shall see in the sequel that there 
was much to justify the opinion. But logic, in the technical 
sense, is inconceivable without concepts, and from the days 
of Aristotle it has been universally believed that proper defi- 
nitions owe their origin to Socrates. A few crude attempts 
at definition, if such they may be rightly called, are referred 
to Empedocles and Democritus. But in so far as they were 
conceived in the spirit of science, they essayed to define 
things materially by giving, so to speak, the chemical for- 
mula for their production. Significant as this very fact is, 
it shows that even the rudiments of the canons of thought 
were not the subjects of reflection. 

In his Organon Aristotle makes it evident that the demand 
for a regulative art of scientific discourse was created by the 
eristic logic-chopping of those who were most deeply influ- 
enced by the Eleatic philosophy. Indeed, the case is quite 
parallel to the rise of the art of rhetoric. Aristotle regarded 
Empedocles as the originator of that art, as he referred the 

iThis study may be regarded as in some sense a development of pp. 7-10 of 
The Necessary and the Contingent in the Aristotelian System, published in 1896 
by The University of Chicago Press. While quite independent in treatment, the two 
papers supplement each other. 

203 



204 Studies in Logical Theory 

beginnings of dialectic to Zeno. But the formulation of both 
arts in well-rounded systems came much later. As men 
conducted lawsuits before the days of Tisias and Corax, so 
also were the essential principles of logic operative and 
effective in practice before Aristotle gave them their abstract 
formulation. 

While it is true, therefore, that the Pre-Socratics had no 
formal logic, it is equally true, and far more significant, that 
they either received from their predecessors or themselves 
developed the conceptions and the presuppositions on which 
the Aristotelian logic is founded. One of the objects of this 
study is to institute a search for some of these basic concep- 
tions of Greek thought, almost all of which existed before 
the days of Socrates, and to consider their origin as well as 
their logical significance. The other aim here kept in view 
is to trace the course of thought in which the logical princi- 
ples, latent in all attempts to construct and verify theories, 
came into play. 

It is impossible, no doubt, to discover a body of thought 
which does not ground itself upon presuppositions. They 
are the warp into which the woof of the system, itself too 
often consisting of frayed ends of other fabrics, is woven 
with the delight of a supposed creator. Rarely is the thinker 
so conscious of his own mental processes that he is aware of 
what he takes for granted. Ordinarily this retirement to an 
interior line takes place only when one has been driven back 
from the advanced position which could no longer be main- 
tained. Emerson has somewhere said : "The foregoing gen- 
erations beheld God and Nature face to face; we through 
their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation 
to the universe ? Why should not we have a poetry and philoso- 
phy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revela- 
tion to us and not the history of theirs?" The difficulty lies 
precisely in our faith in immediate insight and revelation, 



Logic of the Pre-Socratic Philosophy 205 

which are themselves only short-cuts of induction, psycho- 
logical short circuits, conducted by media we have disre- 
garded. Only a fundamentally critical philosophy pushes 
its doubt to the limit of demanding the credentials of those 
conceptions which have come to be regarded as axiomatic. 

The need of going back of Aristotle in our quest for the 
truth is well shown by his attitude toward the first principles 
of the several sciences. To him they are immediately given 
—afieaoi irpordaei^ — and hence are ultimate a priori. The 
historical significance of this fact is already apparent. It 
means that in his day these first principles, which sum up 
the outcome of previous inductive movements of thought, 
were regarded as so conclusively established that the steps 
by which they had been inferred were allowed to lapse from 
memory. 

No account of the history of thought can hope to satisfy 
the demands of reason that does not explain the origin of the 
convictions thus embodied in principles. The only accept- 
able explanation would be in terms of will and interest. To 
give such an account would, however, require the knowledge 
of secular pursuits and ambitions no longer obtainable. It 
might be fruitful of results if we could discover even the 
theoretical interests of the age before Thales; but we know 
that in modern times the direction of interest characteristic 
of the purely practical pursuits manifests its reformative 
influences in speculation a century or more after it has begun 
to shape the course of common life. Hence we might mis- 
interpret the historical data if they were obtainable. But 
general considerations, which we need not now rehearse, as 
well as indications contained in the later history of thought, 
hereinafter sketched, point to the primacy of the practical as 
yielding the direction of interest that determines the course 
it shall take. 

It was said above that the principles of science are the 



206 Studies in Logical Theory 

result of an inductive movement, and that the inductive 
movement is directed by an interest. Hence the principles 
are contained in, or rather are the express definition of, the 
interest that gave them birth. In other words, there is 
implied in all induction a process of deduction. Every 
stream of thought embraces not only the main current, but 
also an eddy, which here and there re-enters it. And this is 
one way of explaining the phenomenon which has long 
engaged the thought of philosophers, namely, the fact of 
successful anticipations of the discoveries of science or, more 
generally still, the possibility of synthetic judgments a priori. 
The solution of the problem is ultimately contained in its 
statement. 1 

To arrive at a stage of mentality not based on assumptions 
one would have, no doubt, to go back to its beginnings. 
Greek thought, even in the time of Thales, was well furnished 
with them. We cannot pause to catalogue them, but it may 
further our project if we consider a few of the more impor- 
tant. The precondition of thought as of life is that nature 
be uniform, or ultimately that the world be rational. This 
is not even, as it becomes later, a conscious demand ; it is the 
primary ethical postulate which expresses itself in the con- 
fidence that it is so. Viewed from a certain angle it 
may be called the principle of sufficient reason. Closely 
associated with it is the universal belief of the early philoso- 
phers of Greece that everything that comes into being is 
bound up inseparably with that which has been before ; more 
precisely, that there is no absolute, but only relative, Becom- 
ing. Corollaries of this axiom soon appeared in the postu- 
lates of the conservation of matter or mass, and the conserva- 
tion of energy, or more properly for the ancients, of motion. 

1 The best special illustration of this truth with which I am acquainted is pre- 
sented for the science of chemistry in an article by F. Wald, "Die Genesis der 
stOchiometrischen Grundgesetze," in Zeitschrift fiir physikalische Chemie, Vol. 
XVIII (1895), pp. 337 ff. 



Logic of the Pre-Socratic Philosophy 207 

Logically these principles appear to signify that the subject, 
while under definition, shall remain just what it is ; and that, 
in the system constituted of subject, predicate, and copula, 
the terms shall "stay put" while the adjustment of verifica- 
tion is in progress. It is a matter of course that the constants 
in the great problem should become permanent landmarks. 

Other corollaries derive from this same principle of 
uniformity. Seeing that all that comes to be in some sense 
already is, there appears the postulate of the unity of the 
world ; and this unity manifests itself not only in the integrity 
and homogeneity of the world-ground, but also in the more 
ideal conception of a universal law to which all special 
modes of procedure in nature are ancillary. In these we 
recognize the insistent demand for the organization of predi- 
cate and copula. Side by side with these formulae stands 
the other, which requires an ordered process of becoming 
and a graduated scale of existences, such as can mediate 
between the extremes of polarity. Such series meet us on 
every hand in early Greek thought. The process of rare- 
faction and condensation in Anaximenes, the 68bs avco /carco 
of Heraclitus, the regular succession of the four Empedoclean 
elements in almost all later systems — these and other exam- 
ples spontaneously occur to the mind. The significance of 
this conception, as the representative of an effective copula, 
will presently be seen. More subtle, perhaps, than any of 
these principles, though not allowed to go so long unchal- 
lenged, is the assumption of a <£vat?, that is, the assumption 
that all nature is instinct with life. The logical interpreta- 
tion of this postulate would seem to be that the concrete 
system of things — subject, predicate, copula — constitutes a 
totality complete in itself and needing no jog from without. 

In this survey of the preconceptions of the early Greek 
philosophers I have employed the terms of the judgment with- 
out apology. The justification for this course must come 



208 Studies in Logical Theory 

ultimately, as for any assumption, from the success of its 
application to the facts. But if "logic" merely formulates 
in a schematic way that which in life is the manipulation of 
concrete experience, with a view to attaining practical ends, 
then its forms must apply here as well as anywhere. Logical 
terminology may therefore be assumed to be welcome to this 
field where judgments are formed, induction is made from 
certain facts to defined conceptions, and deductions are 
derived from principles or premises assumed. Speaking then 
in these terms we may say that the Pre-Socratics had three 
logical problems set for them: First, there was a demand 
for a predicate, or, in other words, for a theory of the world. 
Secondly, there was the need of ascertaining just what should 
be regarded as the subject, or, otherwise stated, just what 
it was that required explanation. Thirdly, there arose the 
necessity of discovering ways and means by which the theory 
could be predicated of the world and by which, in turn, the 
hypothesis erected could be made to account for the concrete 
experience of life: in terms of logic this problem is that of 
maintaining an efficient copula. It is not assumed that the 
sequence thus stated was historically observed without cross- 
ing and overlapping ; but a survey of the history of the period 
will show that, in a general way, the logical requirements 
asserted themselves in this order. 

1. Greek philosophy began its career with induction. 
We have already stated that the preconceptions with which 
it approached its task were the result of previous inductions, 
and indeed the" epic and theogonic poetry of the Greeks 
abounds in thoughts indicative of the consciousness of all of 
these problems. Thus Homer is familiar with the notion 
that all things proceed from water, 1 and that, when the 
human body decays, it resolves itself into earth and water. 2 
Other opinions might be enumerated, but they would add 

IB 201,246. 2H 99. 



Logic of the Pre-Socbatic Philosophy 209 

nothing to the purpose. When men began, in the spirit of 
philosophy, to theorize about the world, they assumed that 
it — the subject — was sufficiently known. Its existence was 
taken for granted, and that which engaged their attention 
was the problem of its meaning. What predicate — so we 
may formulate their question — should be given to the sub- 
ject? It is noticeable that their induction was quite per- 
functory. But such is always the case until there are rival 
theories competing for acceptance, and even then the impulse 
to gather up evidence derived from a wide field and assured 
by resort to experiment comes rather with the desire to test 
a hypothesis than to form it. It is the effort to verify that 
brings out details and also the negative instances. Hence 
we are not to blame Thales for rashness in making his 
generalization that all is Water. We do not know what indi- 
cations led to this conclusion. Aristotle ventured a guess, 
but the motives assumed for Thales agree too well with those 
which weighed with Hippo to admit of ready acceptance. 

Anaximander, feeling the need of deduction as a sequel 
to induction, found his predicate in the Infinite. We can- 
not now delay to inquire just what he meant by the 
term ; but it is not unlikely that its very vagueness recom- 
mended it to a man of genius who caught enthusiastically 
at the skirts of knowledge. Anaximenes, having pushed 
verification somewhat farther and eliciting some negative 
instances, rejected water and the Infinite and inferred 
that all was air. His apxv must have the quality of infinity, 
but, a copula having been found in the process of rarefaction 
and condensation, it must occupy a determinate place in the 
series of typical forms of existence. The logical signifi- 
cance of this thought will engage our attention later. 

Meanwhile it may be well to note that thus far only one 
predicate has been offered by each philosopher. This is 
doubtless due to the preconception of the unity and homo- 



210 Studies in Logical Theory 

geneity of the world, of which we have already made mention. 
Although at the beginning its significance was little realized, 
the conception was destined to play a prominent part in 
Greek thought. It may be regarded from different points 
of view not necessarily antagonistic. One may say, as 
indeed has oftentimes been said, that it was due to ignorance. 
Men did not know the complexity of the world, and hence 
declared its substance to be simple. Again, it may be 
affirmed that the assumption was merely the naive reflex of 
the ethical postulate that we shall unify our experience and 
organize it for the realization of our ideals. While increased 
knowledge has multiplied the so-called chemical elements, 
physics knows nothing of their differences, and chemistry 
itself demands their reduction. 

The extension and enlarged scope of homogeneity came 
in two ways: First, it presented itself by way of abstraction 
from the particular predicates that may be given to things. 
This was due to the operation of the fundamental assump- 
tion that the world must be intelligible. Thus, even in 
Anaximander, the world-ground takes no account of the 
diversity of things except in the negative way of providing 
that the contrariety of experience shall arise from it. We 
are therefore referred for our predicate to a somewhat 
behind concrete experience. The Pythagoreans fix upon a 
single aspect of things as the essential, and find the mean- 
ing of the world in mathematical relations. The Eleatics 
press the conception of homogeneity until it is reduced to 
identity. Identity means the absence of difference ; hence, 
spatially considered, it requires the negation of a void and 
the indivisibility of the world ; viewed temporally, it pre- 
cludes the succession of different states and hence the 
possibility of change. 

We thus reach the acute stage of the problem of the One 
and the Many. The One is here the predicate, the subject 



Logic of the Pre-Socratio Philosophy 211 

is the Many. The solution of the difficulty is the task of 
the copula, and we shall recur to the theme in due time. 
It may be well, however, at this point to draw attention to 
the fact that the One is not always identical with the predi- 
cate, nor the Many with the subject. In the rhythmic 
movement of erecting and verifying hypotheses the interest 
shifts and what was but now the predicate, by taking the 
place of the premises, comes to be regarded as the given 
from which the particular is to be derived or deduced. 
There is thus likewise a shift in the positions of existence 
and meaning. The subject, or the world, was first assumed 
as the given means with which to construct the predicate, 
its meaning ; once the hypothesis has been erected, the 
direction of interest shifts back to the beginning, and in 
the process of verification or deduction the quondam predi- 
cate, now the premises, becomes the given, and the task set 
for thought is the derivation of fact. For the moment, or 
until the return to the world is accomplished, the One is the 
only real, the Manifold remains mere appearance. 

The second form in which the sense of the homogeneity 
of the world embodies itself is not, like the first, static, but 
is altogether dynamic. That which makes the whole world 
kin is neither the presence nor the absence of a quality, but a 
principle. The law thus revealed is, therefore, not a matter 
of the predicate, but is the copula itself. Hence we must 
defer a fuller consideration of it for the present. 

2. As has already been said, the inductive movement 
implies the deductive, and not only as something preceding 
or accompanying it, but as its inner meaning and ultimate 
purpose. So too it was with the earliest Greek thinkers. 
Their object in setting up a predicate was the derivation of 
the subject from it. In other words their ambition was to 
discover the apxv from which the genesis of the world pro- 
ceeds. But deduction is really a much more serious task 



212 Studies in Logical Theoky 

than would at first appear to one who is familiar with the 
Aristotelian machinery of premises and middle terms. The 
business of deduction is to reveal the subject, and ordi- 
narily the subject quite vanishes from view. Induction is 
rapid, but deduction lags far behind. It may require but a 
momentary flash of "insight" on the part of the physical phi- 
losopher to discover a principle ; if it is really significant, 
inventors will be engaged for centuries in deducing from it 
applications to the needs of life by means of contrivances. 
Thus after ages we come to know more of the subject, which 
is thereby enriched. The contrivances are the representa- 
tives of the copula in practical affairs ; in quasi-theoretical 
spheres they are the apparatus for experimentation. It has 
just been remarked that by the application of the principles 
to life it is enriched ; in other words, it receives new mean- 
ing, and new meaning signifies a new predicate. Theory 
is at times painfully aware of the multitude of new predicates 
proposed ; rarely does it realize that there has been created 
a new heaven and a new earth. Without the latter, the for- 
mer would be absurd. 

Men take very much for granted and regard almost every 
achievement as a matter of course. Hence they do not become 
aware of their changed position except as it reflects itself in 
new schemes and in a larger outlook. The subject receives 
only a summary glance to discover what new predicate shall 
be evolved. Hence, while there is in Greek philosophy a 
strongly marked deductive movement, the theoretical results 
to the subject are insignificant. Thales seems, indeed, to 
have had no means to offer for the derivation of the world, 
but he evidently had no doubt that it was possible. With him 
and with others the assumption, however vaguely understood, 
seems to have been that the subject, like the predicate, was sim- 
ple. Thus the essential unity of the world, considered as exist- 
ence no less than as meaning, is a foregone conclusion. The 



Logic of the Pre-Socratic Philosophy 213 

sense of a division in the subject seems to arise with Empe- 
docles when, reaping the harvest of the Eleatic definition of 
substance, he parted the world, as subject and as predicate, 
into four elements. 

We may, perhaps, pause a moment to consider the signifi- 
cance of the assumption of four elements which plays so 
large a part in subsequent philosophies. There is no need 
of enlarging on the importance of the association of multiple 
elements with the postulate that nothing is absolutely created 
and nothing absolutely passes away. These are indeed the 
pillars that support chemical science, and they further imply 
the existence of qualities of different rank; but that implica- 
tion, as we shall see, lay even in the process of rarefaction 
and condensation introduced by Anaximenes. The four 
elements concern us here chiefly as testifying to the fact that 
certain practical interests had summed up the essential 
characteristics of nature in forms sufficiently significant to 
have maintained themselves even to our day. In regard to 
fire, air, and water this is not greatly to be wondered at; it 
is a somewhat different case with earth. If metallurgy and 
other pursuits which deal with that which is roughly classed 
as earth had been highly enough developed to have reacted 
upon the popular mind, this element could not possibly have 
been assumed to be so homogeneous. The conception 
clearly reflects the predominantly agricultural interest of 
the Greeks in their relation to the earth. This further 
illustrates the slow progress which deduction makes in the 
reconstitution of the subject. 

It is different, however, with Anaxagoras and the Ato- 
mists. Apparently the movement begun by Empedocles 
soon ran its extreme course. Instead of four elements there 
is now an infinite number of substances, each differentiated 
from the other. The meaning of this wide swing of the 
pendulum is not altogether clear; but it is evident from the 



214 Studies in Logical Theoby 

system of Anaxagoras that the metals, for example, possessed 
a significance which they can not have had for Empedocles. 

The opposite swing of the pendulum is seen in the later 
course of the Eleatics. Given a predicate as fixed and 
unified as they assumed, the subject cannot possibly be con- 
ceived in terms of it and hence it is denied outright. In the 
dialectic of Zeno and Melissus, dealing with the problems 
of the One and the Many, there is much that suggests the 
solution offered by the Atomists ; but it is probably impossible 
now to ascertain whether these passages criticise a doctrine 
already propounded or pointed the way for successors. 
While the Eleatics asserted the sole reality of the One, 
Anaxagoras and the Atomists postulated a multiplicity without 
essential unity. But the human mind seems to be incapable 
of resting in that decision ; it demands that the world shall 
have not meanings, but a meaning. This demand calls not 
only for a unified predicate, but also for an effective copula. 

3. We have already remarked that the steps by which 
the predicate was inferred are for the most part unknown. 
Certain suggestions are contained in the reports of Aristotle, 
but it is safe to say that they are generally guesses well or 
ill founded. The summary inductive mediation has left few 
traces ; and the process of verification, in the course of which 
hypotheses were rejected and modified, can be followed only 
here and there in the records. Almost our only source of 
information is the dialectic of systems. Fortunately for our 
present purpose we do not need to know the precise form 
which a question assumed to the minds of the several phi- 
losophers ; the efforts which they made to meet the imperious 
demands of logic here speak for themselves. 

At first there was no scheme for the mediation of the 
predicate back to the subject. Indeed there seems not to 
have existed in the mind of Thales a sense of its need. 
Anaximander raised the question, but the process of segrega- 



Logic of the Pre-Sockatic Philosophy 215 

tion or separation (i/cKptveadac) which he propounded was so 
vaguely conceived that it has created more problems than it 
solved. Anaximenes first proposed a scheme that has borne 
fruits. He said that things are produced from air by rare- 
faction and condensation. This process offers not only a 
principle of difference, but also a regulative conception, the 
evaluation of which engaged the thought of almost all the 
later Pre-Socratics. It implies that extension and mass con- 
stitute the essential characters of substance, and, fully appre- 
hended, contains in germ the whole materialistic philosophy 
from Parmenides at one extreme to Democritus and Anax- 
agoras at the other. The difficulties inherent in the view 
were unknown to Anaximenes ; for, having a unitary predi- 
cate, he assumed also a homogeneous subject. 

The logical position of Heraclitus is similar to that of 
Anaximenes. He likewise posits a simple predicate and 
further signalizes its functional character by naming it Fire. 
Without venturing upon debatable ground we may say that 
it was the restless activity of the element that caused him to 
single it out as best expressing the meaning of things. Its 
rhythmic libration typified to him the principle of change in 
existence and of existence in change. It is the "ever-living" 
copula, devouring subject and predicate alike and re-creating 
them functionally as co-ordinate expressions of itself. That 
which alone is, the abiding, is not the physical composition 
of a thing, but the law of reciprocity by which it maintains 
a balance. This he calls variously by the names of Harmony, 
Logos, Necessity, Justice. In this system of functional 
co-ordinates nothing escapes the accounting on 'Change; 1 

iln allusion to fr. 90 (Diels). Diels finds in fr. 108 (fr. 18, Bywater), otl 
<to<\>6v eo-rt irdvTojv Kexiopto-pLei/ov the thought that God is the Absolute, comparing the 
Nous of Anaxagoras and the x a, P t0 " r '? 'Sea of Plato and the ouo-i'a x t ^P La " ri l of Aristotle. 
He assumes that aoQov = A.6yos and concedes great significance to the fragment. 
But this interpretation is utterly incompatible with everything else that we know 
of Heraclitus, and should be admitted only if it were the only one admissible. 
ZeIiLER discusses the fragment at length, Vol. I, p. 629, 1. If Diels's interpretation 
be accepted, the exposition above given of Heraclitus's logical position must be 
abandoned. 



216 Studies in Logical Theory 

all things are in continuous flux, only the nodes of the rhythm 
remaining constant. It is not surprising therefore that 
Heraclitus has been the subject of so much speculation and 
comment in modern times ; for the functional character of all 
distinctions in his system marks the affinity of his doctrines 
for those of modern psychology and logic. 1 

The Pythagoreans, having by abstraction obtained a 
predicate, acknowledged the existence of the subject, but did 
not feel the need of a copula in the theoretical sphere, except 
as it concerned the inner relation of the predicate. To them 
the world was number, but number itself was pluralistic, or 
let us rather say dualistic. The odd and the even, the generic 
constituents of number, had somehow to be brought together. 
The bond was found in Unity, or, again, in Harmony. When 
they inquired how numbers constituted the world, their 
answer was in general only a nugatory exercise of an un- 
bridled fancy. 2 Such and such a number was Justice, such 
another, Man. It was only in the wholly practical sphere of 
experiment that they reached a conclusion worth recording. 
Its significance they themselves did not perceive. Here, by 
the application of mathematical measurements to sounds, 
they discovered how to produce tones of a given pitch, and 
thus successfully demonstrated the efficiency of their copula. 

The Eleatics followed the same general course of abstrac- 
tion; but with them the sense of the unity of the world 
effaced its rich diversity. Xenophanes does not appear to 
have pressed the conception so far as to deny all change 
within the world. Parmenides, however, bated no jot of the 
legitimate consequences of his logical position, interpreting, 
as he did, the predicate, originally conceived as meaning, in 

i It has been, and in some quarters is still, the fashion to say that Heraclitus is 
the originator of the doctrine of relativity ; but Zeller is quite right in denying the 
charge. No doubt his teachings lent themselves readily to such a development, but 
he did not so express himself. According to him the contrarieties coexist in the process. 

2 Cf. Ritter-Preller, § 65c. 



Logic of the Pre-Sockatic Philosophy 217 

terms of existence. That which is simply is. Thus there 
is left only a one-time predicate, now converted into a sub- 
ject of which only itself, as a brute fact, can be predicated. 
Stated logically, Parmenides is capable only of uttering 
identical propositions: A=A. The fallacious character of 
the report of the senses and the impossibility of Becoming 
followed as a matter of course. Where the logical copula is 
a mere sign of equation there can be neither induction nor 
deduction. We are caught in a theoretical cul-de-sac. 

We are not now concerned to know in what light the 
demand for a treatise on the world of Opinion may have 
appeared to Parmenides himself. The avenues by which 
men reach conclusions which are capable of simplification 
and syllogistic statement are too various to admit of plaus- 
ible conjecture in the absence of specific evidence. But it is 
clear that his resort to the expedient reflected a conscious- 
ness of the state of deadlock. In that part of his philosophi- 
cal poem he dealt with many questions of detail in a rather 
more practical spirit. Following the lead of Heraclitus and 
the Pythagoreans he was more successful here than in the 
field of metaphysics. Thus we see once more that the wounds 
of theory are healed by practice. But, as usual, even though 
the metaphysician does receive the answer to his doubts by 
falling into a severely practical pit and extricating himself 
by steps which he fashions with his hands, his mental habit 
is not thereby reconstructed. The fixed predicate of the 
Eleatics was bequeathed to the Platonic- Aristotelian formal 
logic, and induction and deduction remained for centuries in 
theory a race between the hedgehog and the hare. 1 The 
true significance of the destructive criticism brought to bear 
by Zeno and Melissus on the concepts of unity, plurality, 
continuity, extension, time, and motion is simply this: that 

1 This, in a word, is the burden of my study of The Necessary and the Contingent 
in the Aristotelian System. 



218 Studies in Logical Theory 

when by a shift of the attention a predicate becomes subject 
or meaning fossilizes as existence, the terms of the logical 
process lose their functional reference and grow to be 
unmeaning and self-contradictory. 

We have already remarked that Empedocles, Anaxagoras, 
and the Atomists sought to solve the problem of the One and 
the Many, of the subject and the predicate, by shattering 
the unitary predicate and thus leaving the field to plurality 
in both spheres. But obviously they were merely postpon- 
ing the real question. Thought, as well as action, demands 
a unity somewhere. Hence the absorbing task of these phi- 
losophers is to disclose or contrive such a bond of unity. 
The form which their quest assumed was the search for a 
basis for physical interaction. 1 

Empedocles clearly believed that he was solving the diffi- 
culty in one form when, he instituted the rhythmic libration 
between unity under the sway of Love and multiplicity 
under the domination of Hate. But even he was not satisfied 
with that. While Love brought all the elements together 
into a sphere and thus produced a unity, it was a unity con- 
stituted of a mixture of elements possessing inalienable char- 
acters not only different but actually antagonistic. On the 
other hand, Hate did indeed separate the confused particles, 
but it effected a sort of unity in that, by segregating the 
particles of the several elements from the others, it brought 
like and like together. In so far Aristotle was clearly right in 
attributing to Love the power to separate as well as to unite. 
Moreover, it would seem that there never was a moment in 
which both agencies were not conceived to be operative, to 
however small an extent. 

Empedocles asserted, however, that a world could arise 
only in the intervals between the extremes of victory in the 

1 1 have in preparation a study of the problem of physical interaction in Pre- 
Socratic philosophy which deals with this question in all its phases. 



Logic of the Pre-Socbatic Philosophy 219 

contest between Love and Hate, when, so to speak, the battle 
was drawn and there was a general mSUe of the combatants. 
It may be questioned, perhaps, whether he distinctly stated 
that in our world everything possessed its portion of each of 
the elements ; but so indispensable did he consider this mix- 
ture that its function of providing a physical unity is unmis- 
takable. A further evidence of his insistent demand for 
unity — the copula — is found in his doctrine that only like 
can act on like ; and the scheme of pores and effluvia which 
he contrived bears eloquent testimony to the earnest consid- 
eration he gave to this matter. For he conceived that all 
interaction took place by means of them. 

Empedocles, then, may be said to have annulled the de- 
cree of divorce he had issued for the elements at the begin- 
ning. But the solution here too is found, not in the 
theoretical, but in the practical, sphere ; for he never retracts 
his assertion that the elements are distinct and antagonistic. 
But even so his problem is defined rather than solved; for 
after the elements have been brought within microscopic 
distance of each other in the mixture, since like can act only 
on like, the narrow space that separates them is still an 
impassable gulf. 1 

Anaxagoras endowed his infinitely numerous substances 
with the same characters of fixity and contrariety that mark 
the four elements of Empedocles. For him, therefore, the 
difficulty of securing unity and co-operation in an effective 
copula is, if that be possible, further aggravated. His grasp 
of the problem, if we may judge from the relatively small 
body of documentary evidence, was not so sure as that of 
Empedocles, though he employed in general the same 
means for its solution. He too postulates a mixture of all 
substances, more consciously and definitely indeed than his 

1 This statement is, of course, figurative, since Empedocles denied the existence 
of a void. 



220 Studies in Logical Theory 

predecessor. Believing that only like can act on like, 1 he is 
led to assume not only an infinite multiplicity of substances, 
but also their complete mixture, so that everything, however 
small, contains a portion of every other. Food, for example, 
however seeming-simple, nourishes the most diverse tissues 
of the body. Thus we discover in the universal mixture of 
substances the basis for co-operation and interaction. 

Anaxagoras, therefore, like Empedocles, feels the need of 
bridging the chasm which he has assumed to exist between 
his distinct substances. Their failure is alike great, and 
is due to the presuppositions they inherited from the Ele- 
atic conception of a severe homogeneity which implies an 
absolute difference from everything else. The embarrass- 
ment of Anaxagoras increases with the introduction of the 
NoO?. This agency was conceived with a view to explaining 
the formation of the world ; that is, with a view to mediating 
between the myriad substances in their essential aloofness 
and effecting the harmonious concord of concrete things. 
While, even on the basis of a universal mixture, the function 
of the Nou? was foredoomed to failure, its task was made more 
difficult still by the definition given to its nature. According 
to Anaxagoras it was the sole exception to the composite 
character of things; it is absolutely pure and simple in 
nature. 2 By its definition, then, it is prevented from accom- 
plishing the work it was contrived to do ; and hence we can- 
not be surprised at the lamentations raised by Plato and 
Aristotle about the failure of Anaxagoras to employ the 

1 1 cannot now undertake a defense of this statement, which runs counter to cer- 
tain ancient reports, but must reserve a full discussion for my account of physical 
interaction. 

2 The motive for making this assumption was clearly the desire to make of the 
Nous the prime mover in the world while exempting it from reaction on the part of 
the world, which would have been unavoidable if its nature had contained parts of 
other things. It is the same problem of "touching without being touched in return" 
that led Aristotle to a similar definition of God and of the rational soul. The same 
difficulty besets the absolutely "simple" soul of Plato's Phaedo and the causality of 
the Ideas. 



Logic of the Pre-Socratio Philosophy 221 

agency he had introduced. To be sure, the N0O9 is no more 
a deus ex machina than were the ideas of Plato or the God 
of Aristotle. They all labored under the same restrictions. 

The Atomists followed with the same recognition of the 
Many, in the infinitely various kinds of atoms; but it was 
tempered by the assumption of an essential homogeneity. 
One atom is distinguished from another by characteristics 
due to its spatial relations. Mass and weight are propor- 
tional to size. Aristotle reports that, though things and 
atoms have differences, it is not in virtue of their differences, 
but in virtue of their essential identity, that they interact. 1 
There is thus introduced a distinction which runs nearly, but 
not quite, parallel to that between primary and secondary 
qualities. 2 Primary qualities are those of size, shape, and 
perhaps 3 position; all others are secondary. On the other 
hand, that which is common to all atoms is their corporeity, 
which does indeed define itself with reference to the primary 
(spatial) qualities, but not alike in all. The atoms of which 
the world is constituted are alike in essential nature, but 
they differ most widely in position. 

It is the void that breaks up the unity of the world — 
atomizes it, if we may use the expression. It is the basis of 
all discontinuity. Atoms and void are thus polar extremes 
reciprocally exclusive. The atoms in their utter isolation 
in space are incapable of producing a world. In order to 
bridge the chasm between atom and atom, recourse is had 
to motion eternal, omnipresent, and necessary. This it 
is that annihilates distances. In the course of their motion 
atoms collide, and in their impact one upon the other the 

1 Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione, 323t> 10 f . 

2 We have seen that this distinction was latent in Anaximenes's process of rare- 
faction and condensation. For other matters see Chaignet, Histoire de la Psy- 
chologies Vol. I, p. 114, whose account, however, needs to be corrected in some 
particulars. 

3 1 say "perhaps" because ancient reports differ as to the precise relation of posi- 
tion and arrangement to the distinction between qualities, primary and secondary. 



222 Studies in Logical Theoey 

Atomists find the precise mode of co-operation by which the 
world is formed. 1 To this agency are due what Lucretius 
happily called "generating motions." 

The problem, however, so insistently pursued the philoso- 
phers of this time that the Atomists did not content them- 
selves with this solution, satisfactory as modern science has 
pretended to consider it. They followed the lead of Emped- 
ocles and Anaxagoras in postulating a widespread, if not 
absolutely universal, mixture. Having on principle excluded 
"essential" differences among the atoms, the impossibility of 
finally distinguishing essential and non-essential had its 
revenge. Important as the device of mixture was to 
Empedocles and Anaxagoras, just so unmeaning ought it to 
have been in the Atomic philosophy, provided that the 
hypothesis could accomplish what was claimed for it. It is not 
necesary to reassert that the assumption of "individua," utterly 
alienated one from the other by a void, rendered the problem 
of the copula insoluble for the Atomists. 

Diogenes of Apollonia is commonly treated contemptu- 
ously as a mere reactionary who harked back to Anaximenes 
and had no significance of his own. The best that can be 
said of such an attitude is that it regards philosophical 
theories as accidental utterances of individuals, naturally 
well or ill endowed, who happen to express conclusions with 
which men in after times agree or disagree. A philosophical 
tenet is an atom, set somewhere in a vacuum, utterly out of rela- 
tion to everything else. But it is impossible to see how, on this 
theory, any system of thought should possess any significance 
for anybody, or how there should be any progress even, or 
retardation. 

Viewed entirely from without, the doctrine of Diogenes 
would seem to be substantially a recrudescence of that of 

i This is only another instance of what Mr. Venn {Empirical Logic, p. 56) has 
wittily alluded to as "screwing up the cause and the effect into close juxtaposition." 



Logic of the Pre-Socratic Philosophy 223 

Anaximenes. Air is once more the element or apxrj out of 
which all proceeds and into which all returns. Again the pro- 
cess of transformation is seen in rarefaction and condensation ; 
and the attributes of substance are those which were com- 
mon to the early hylozoists. But there is present a keen 
sense of a problem unknown to Anaximenes. What the 
early philosopher asserted in the innocence of the youth of 
thought, the later physiologist reiterates with emphasis 
because he believes that the words are words of life. 

The motive for recurring to the earlier system is supplied 
by the imperious demand for a copula which had so much 
distressed Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists. And 
here we are not left to conjecture, but are able to refer to 
the ipsissima verba of our philosopher. After a brief pro- 
logue, in which he stated that one's starting-point must be 
beyond dispute, he immediately * turned to his theme in these 
words: 2 "In my opinion, to put the whole matter in a nut- 
shell, all things are derived by alteration from the same 
substance, and indeed all are one and the same. And this 
is altogether evident. For if the things that now exist in 
the world — earth and water and air and fire and whatsoever 
else appears to exist in this world — if, I say, any one of 
these were different from the other, different that is to say 
in its proper peculiar nature, and did not rather, being one 
and the same, change and alter in many ways, then in no- 
wise would things be able to mix with one another, nor would 
help or harm come to one from the other, nor would any 
plant spring from the earth, nor any other living thing come 
into being, if things were not so constituted as to be one 
and the same." 

These words contain a singularly interesting expression 

i Simplicius says ev0i>? ixera to irpooifitov ; see Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsdkra> 
tiker (Berlin, 1903), p. 347, 1. 18. 

2Fr. 2, Diels. 



224 Studies in Logical Theory 

of the need of restoring the integrity of the process which 
had been lost in the effort to solve the problem of the One 
and the Many without abandoning the point of view won by 
the Eleatics. Aristotle and Theophrastus paraphrase and 
sum up the passage above quoted by saying 1 that interaction 
is impossible except on the assumption that all the world is 
one and the same. Hence it is manifest, as was said above, 
that the return of Diogenes to the monistic system of Anax- 
imenes had for its conscious motive the avoidance of the 
dualism that had sprung up in the interval and had rendered 
futile the multiplied efforts to secure an effective copula. 

We should note, however, that in the attempt thus made 
to undo the work of several generations Diogenes retained 
the principle which had wrought the mischief. We have 
before remarked that the germ of the Atomic philosophy 
was contained in the process of rarefaction and condensation. 
Hence, in accepting it along with the remainder of Anax- 
imenes's theory, the fatal assumption was reinstated. It is 
the story of human systems in epitome. The superstructure 
is overthrown, and with the debris a new edifice is built upon 
the old foundations. 

In the entire course of philosophical thought from Thales 
onward the suggestion of an opposition between the subject 
and the predicate had appeared. It has often been said that 
it was expressed by the search for a <j>vais t or a true nature, 
in contrast with the world as practically accepted. There is 
a certain truth in this view ; for the effort to attain a predi- 
cate which does not merely repeat the subject does imply 
that there is an opposition. But the efforts made to return 
from the predicate to the subject, in a deductive movement, 
shows that the difference was not believed to be absolute. 
This is true, however, only of those fields of speculation 
that lie next to the highways of practical life, which lead 

1 See Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, p. 343, 1. 2 ; p. 344, 1. 27. 



Logic of the Pre-Socratic Philosophy 225 

equally in both directions, or, let us rather say, which unite 
while they mark separation. In the sphere of abstract ideas 
the sense of embarrassment was deep and constantly growing 
deeper. The reconstruction, accomplished on lower levels, 
did not attain unto those heights. Men doubted conclusions, 
but did not think to demand the credentials of their common 
presuppositions. 

Side by side with the later philosophers whom we have 
mentioned there walked men whom we are wont to call the 
Sophists. They were the journalists and pamphleteers of 
those days, men who, without dealing profoundly with any 
special problem, familiarized themselves with the generali- 
zations of workers in special fields and combined these ideas 
for the entertainment of the public. They were neither 
philosophers nor physicists, but, like some men whom we 
might cite from our own times, endeavored to popularize 
the teachings of both. Naturally they seized upon the most 
sweeping generalizations and the preconceptions which dis- 
closed themselves in manifold forms. Just as naturally they 
had no eyes with which to detect the significance of the 
besetting problems at which, in matters more concrete, the 
masters were toiling. Hence the contradictions, revealed in 
the analysis we have just given of the philosophy of the age, 
stood out in utter nakedness. 

The result was inevitable. The inability to discover a 
unitary predicate, more still, the failure to attain a working 
copula, led directly to the denial of the possibility of predi- 
cation. There was no truth. Granted that it existed, it 
could not be known. Even if known, it could not be com- 
municated. In these incisive words of Gorgias the conclu- 
sion of the ineffectual effort to establish a logic of science is 
clearly stated. But the statement is happily only the half- 
truth, which is almost a complete falsehood. It takes no 
account of the indications, everywhere present, of a needed 



226 Studies in Logical Theory 

reconstruction. Least of all does it catch the meaning of 
such a demand. 

The Sophists did not, however, merely repeat in abstract 
from the teachings of the philosophers. It matters not 
whether they originated the movement or not ; at all events 
they were pioneers in the field of moral philosophy. Here 
it was that they chiefly drew the inferences from the dis- 
tinction between <f>vo-ei, and vo/jlco. Nothing could have been 
more effective in disengaging the firmly rooted moral pre- 
possessions and rendering them amenable to philosophy. 
Just here, at last, we catch a hint of the significance of the 
logical process. In a striking passage in Plato's Protagoras, 1 
which one is fain to regard as an essentially true reproduction 
of a discourse by that great man, Justice and Reverence 
are accorded true validity. On inquiring to what character- 
istic this honorable distinction is due, we find that it does 
not reside in themselves ; it is due to the assumption that a 
state must exist. 

Here, then, in a word, is the upshot of the logical 
movement. Logical predicates are essentially hypothetical, 
deriving their validity from the interest that moves men to 
affirm them. When they lose this hypothetical character, 
as terms within a volitional system, and set up as entities at 
large, they cease to function and forfeit their right to exist. 

1 320 c f . 



X 

VALUATION AS A LOGICAL PROCESS 

The purpose of this discussion is to supply the main out- 
lines of a theory of value based upon analysis of the valua- 
tion-process from the logical point of view. The general 
principle which we shall seek to establish is that judgments 
of value, whether passed upon things or upon modes of 
conduct, are essentially objective in import, and that they 
are reached through a process of valuation which is essen- 
tially of the same logical character as the judgment-process 
whereby conclusions of physical fact are established — 
in a word, that the valuation-process, issuing in the finished 
judgment of value expressive of the judging person's defini- 
tive attitude toward the thing in question, is constructive of 
an order of reality in the same sense as, in current theories 
of knowledge, is the judgment of sense-perception and sci- 
ence. Our method of procedure to this end will be that of 
assuming, and adhering to as consistently as possible, the 
standpoint of the individual in the process of deliberating 
upon an ethical or economic problem (for, as we shall hold, 
all values properly so called are either ethical or economic), 
and of ascertaining, as accurately as may be, the meaning of 
the deliberative or evaluating process and of the various fac- 
tors in it as these are presented in the individual's apprehen- 
sion. It is in this sense that our procedure will be logical 
rather than psychological. We shall be concerned to deter- 
mine the meaning of the object of valuation as object, of the 
standard of value as standard, and of the valued object as 
valued, in terms of the individual's own apprehension of 
these, rather than to ascertain the nature and conditions of 
his apprehensions of these considered as psychical events. 

227 



228 Studies in Logical Theoey 

Our attention will throughout be directed to these factors 
or phases of the valuation-process in their functional aspect 
of determinants of the valuing agent's practical attitude, and 
never, excepting for purposes of incidental illustration and 
in a very general and tentative way, as events in conscious- 
ness mediated by more "elementary" psychical processes. 
The results which we shall gain by adhering to this method 
will enable us to see not merely that our judgments of value 
are in function and meaning objective, but also that our 
judgments of sense-perception and science are, as such, 
capable of satisfactory interpretation only as being incidental 
to the attainment and progressive reconstruction of judg- 
ments of value. 

The first three main divisions will be given over to estab- 
lishing the objectivity of content and function of judgments 
of value. The fourth division will present a detailed analy- 
sis of the two types of judgment of value, the ethical and 
economic, defining them and relating them to each other, 
and correlating them in the manner just suggested with 
judgment of the physical type. After considering, in the 
fifth part, certain general objections to the positions thus 
stated, we shall proceed in the sixth and concluding division 
to define the function of the consciousness of value in the 
economy of life. 1 

I 

The system of judgments which defines what one calls 
the objective order of things is inevitably unique for each 
particular individual. No two men can view the world from 
the standpoint of the same theoretical and practical inter- 

1 Considerations of space as well as circumstances attending the immediate 
preparation of this discussion for the press have precluded any but the most general 
and casual reference to the recent literature of the subject. Much of this literature 
only imperfectly distinguishes the logical and psychological points of view, so that 
critical reference to it, unaccompanied by detailed restatement and analysis of the 
positions criticised, would be useless. 



Valuation as a Logical Process 229 

ests, nor can any two proceed in the work of gaining for 
themselves knowledge of the world with precisely equal 
degrees of skill and accuracy. Each must be prompted and 
guided, in the construction of his knowledge of single things 
and of the system in which they have their being, by his 
own particular interests and aims ; and even when one per- 
son in a measure shares in the interests and aims of another, 
the rate and manner of procedure will not be the same for 
both, nor will the knowledge gained be for both equally 
systematic in arrangement or in interrelation of its parts. 
Each man lives in a world of his own — a world, indeed, 
identical in certain fundamental respects with the worlds 
which his fellow-men have constructed for themselves, but 
one nevertheless necessarily unique through and through 
because each man is a unique individual. There is, doubt- 
less, a "social currency" of objects which implies a certain 
identity of meaning in objects as experienced by different 
individuals. The existence of society presupposes, and its 
evolution in turn develops and extends, a system of generally 
accepted objects and relations. Nevertheless, the " socially 
current object " is, as such, an abstraction just as the uniform 
social individual is likewise an abstraction. The only con- 
crete object ever actually known or in any wise experienced 
by any person is the object as constructed by that person in 
accordance with his own aims and purposes, and in which 
there is, therefore, a large and important share of meaning 
which is significant to no one else. 

It is needless in this discussion to dwell at length upon 
the general principle of recent "functional" psychology, that 
practical ends are the controlling factors in the acquisition 
of our knowledge of objective things. We shall take for 
granted the truth of the general proposition that cognition, 
in whatever sphere of science or of practical life, is essen- 
tially teleological in the sense of being incidental always, 



230 Studies in Logical Theory 

more or less directly, to the attainment of ends. Cognition, 
as the apperceptive or attentive process, is essentially the 
process of scrutinizing a situation (whether theoretical or 
practical) with a view to determining the availability for one's 
intended purpose of such objects and conditions as the 
situation may present. The objects and conditions thus 
determined will be made use of or ignored, counted upon as 
advantageous or guarded against as unfavorable — in a word, 
responded to — in ways suggested by their character as 
ascertained through reference to the interest in question. 
In this sense, then, objective things as known by individual 
persons are essentially complex stimuli whose proper func- 
tion and reason for being it is to elicit useful responses in 
the way of conduct — responses conducive to the realization 
of ends. 

From this point of view, then, the difference between one 
person's knowledge of a particular object and another's 
signifies (1) a difference between these persons' original 
purposes in setting out to gain knowledge of the object, and 
(2) consequently a difference between their present ways 
of acting with reference to the object. The bare object as 
socially current is, at best, for each individual simply a ground 
upon which subsequent construction may be made; and the 
subsequent construction which each individual is prompted 
by his circumstances and is able to work out in judgment 
first makes the object, for this individual, real and for his 
purposes complete. 

Now, it is our primary intention to show that objects are, 
in cases of a certain important class, not yet ready to serve 
the person who knows them in their proper character of 
stimuli, when they have been, even exhaustively, defined in 
merely physical terms. It is very often not enough that the 
dimensions of an object and its physical properties, even the 
more recondite ones as well as those more commonly under- 



Valuation as a Logical Process 231 

stood — it is often not enough for the purposes of an agent 
that these characters should make up the whole sum of his 
knowledge of the object in question. A measure of knowl- 
edge in terms of physical categories is often only a begin- 
ning — the result of a preliminary stage of the entire process 
of teleological determination, which must be carried through 
before the object of attention can be satisfactorily known. 
In the present study of the logic of valuation we shall be 
occupied exclusively with the discussion of cases of this kind. 
In our judgments of sense-perception and physical science 
we have presented to us material objects in their physical 
aspect. When these latter are inadequate to suggest or war- 
rant overt conduct, our knowledge of them must be supple- 
mented and reconstructed in ways presently to be specified. 
It is in the outcome of judgment-processes in which this 
work of supplementing and reconstructing is carried through 
that the consciousness of value, in the proper sense, arises, 
and these processes, then, are those which we shall here con- 
sider under the name of "processes of valuation." They will 
therefore best be approached through specification of the 
ways in which our physical judgments may be inadequate. 

Let us, then, assume, as has been indicated, that the pro- 
cess of acquiring knowledge — that is to say, the process of 
judgment or attention — is in every case of its occurrence 
incidental to the attainment of an end. We must make this 
assumption without attempting formally to justify it — though 
in the course of our discussion it will be abundantly illus- 
trated. Let us, in accordance with this view, think of the 
typical judgment-process as proceeding, in the main, as fol- 
lows: First of all must come a sense of need or deficiency, 
which may, on occasion, be preceded by a more or less violent 
and sudden shock to the senses, forcibly turning one's atten- 
tion to the need of immediate action. By degrees this sense 
of need will grow more definite and come to express itself in 



232 Studies in Logical Theory 

a more or less " clear and distinct " image of an end, toward 
which end the agent is drawn by desire and to which he 
looks with much or little of emotion. The emergence of 
the end into consciousness immediately makes possible and 
occasions definite analysis of the situation in which the end 
must be worked out. Salient features of the situation forth- 
with are noticed — whether useful things or favoring condi- 
tions, or, on the other hand, the absence of any such. Thus 
predicates and then subjects for many subsidiary judgments 
in the comprehensive judgment-process emerge together in 
action and interaction upon each other. The predicates, 
developed out of the general end toward which the agent 
strives, afford successive points of view for fresh analyses of 
the situation. The logical subjects thus discovered — objects 
of attention and knowledge — require, on the other hand, as 
they are scrutinized and judged, modification and re-exami- 
nation of the end. The end grows clearer and fuller of 
detail as the predicates or implied ("constituent") ideas 
which are developed out of it are distinguished from each 
other and used in making one's inventory of the objective 
situation. Conversely, the situation loses its first aspect of 
confusion and takes on more and more the aspect of an 
orderly assemblage of objects and conditions, useful, indif- 
ferent, and adverse, by means of which the end may in 
greater or less measure be attained or must, in however 
greatly modified a form, be defeated. Now, in this develop- 
ment of the judgment-process, it must be observed, the end 
must be more or less clearly and consistently conceived 
throughout as an activity, if the objective means of action 
which have been determined in the process are not to be, at the 
last, separate and unrelated data still requiring co-ordination. 
If the end has been so conceived, the means will inevitably be 
known as members of a mechanical system, since the predi- 
cates by which they have been determined have at every 



Valuation as a Logical Process 233 

point involved this factor of amenability to co-ordination. 
The judgment-process, if properly conducted and brought to 
a conclusion, must issue at the end in the functional unity of 
a finished plan of conduct with a perfected mechanical 
co-ordination of the available means. 

We have now to see that much more may be involved in 
such a process as this than has been explicitly stated in our 
brief analysis. For the end itself may be a matter of delib- 
eration, just as must be the physical means of accomplishing 
it; and, again, the means may call for scrutiny and deter- 
mination from other points of view than the physical and 
mechanical. The final action taken at the end may express 
the outcome of deliberate ethical and economic judgment 
as well as of judgments in the sphere of sense-perception 
and physical science. Let us consider, for example, that 
one's end is the construction of a house upon a certain plot 
of ground. This end expresses the felt need of a more com- 
fortable or more reputable abode, and has so much of gen- 
eral presumption in its favor. There may, however, be 
many reasons for hesitation. The cost in time or money or 
materials on hand may tax one's resources and injuriously 
curtail one's activities along other lines. And there may be 
ethical reasons why the plan should not be carried out. The 
house may shut off a pleasing prospect from the view of the 
entire neighborhood and serve no better end than the grati- 
fication of its owner's selfish vanity. It will cost a sum of 
money which might be used in paying just, though outlawed 
debts. 

Now, from the standpoint of such problems as these the 
fullest possible preliminary knowledge of the physical and 
mechanical fitness of our means must still be very abstract 
and general. It would be of use in any undertaking like the 
one we have supposed, but it is not sufficient in so far as the 
problem is one's own problem, concrete, particular, and so 



234 Studies in Logical Theoey 

unique. One may, of course, proceed to the stage of physi- 
cal judgment without having settled the ethical problems 
which may have presented themselves at the outset. The 
end may be entertained tentatively as a hypothesis until 
certain mechanical problems have been dealt with. But 
manifestly this is only postponement of the issue. The agent 
is still quite unprepared, even after the means have been so 
far determined, to take the first step in the execution of the 
plan ; indeed, his uncertainty is probably only the more har- 
assing than before. Moreover, the economic problems in 
the case are now more sharply defined, and these for the time 
being still further darken counsel. Manifestly the need for 
deliberation is at this point quite as urgent as the need for 
physical determination can ever be, and the need is evidenced 
in the same way by the actual arrest and postponement of 
overt conduct. The agent, despite his physical knowledge, 
is not yet free to embrace the end and, having done so, use 
thereto the means at his disposal. It is plainly impossible 
to use the physical means until one knows in terms of Sub- 
stance and Attribute or Cause and Effect, or whatever other 
physical categories one may please, what manner of behavior 
may be expected of them. So likewise is it as truly impos- 
sible, for one intellectually and morally capable of appreciat- 
ing problems of a more advanced and complex sort, to exploit 
the physical properties thus discovered until ethical deter- 
mination of the end and economic determination of the means 
have been completed. 1 

There are, then, we conclude, cases in which physical 
determination of the means is by itself not a sufficient prepa- 

1 In order to avoid complicating the problems, we have here employed the com- 
mon notion that the physical world, physical object, and property may be taken for 
granted as possible adequate contents of judgment, and that the problem is only as 
to the objectivity of economic and ethical contents. Of course we may, in the 
end, come to believe that the "physical" object is itself an economic construct, in 
the large sense of "economic;" that is, an instrument of an effective or successful 
experience. Thus in terms of the illustration used above, in the attitude of enter- 
taining in a general way the plan of building a house of some sort or other, one may 



Valuation as a Logical Process 235 

ration for conduct — in which there are ethical and economic 
problems which delay the application of the physical means to 
the end to which they may be physically adapted. Indeed, 
so much as this may well appear as sufficiently obvious 
without extended illustration. Everyone knows that it is 
nearly always necessary, in undertaking any work in which 
material things are used as means, to count the cost; and 
everyone knows likewise that not every end that is in any 
way attractive and within one's reach may without more ado 
be taken as an object of settled desire and effort. It is 
indeed needless to elaborate these commonplaces in the 
sense in which they are commonly understood. However, 
such is not our present purpose. Our purpose is the more 
specific one of showing that the meaning of Objectivity must 
be widened so as to include (1) the "universe" of ends in 
their ethical aspect and (2) the economic aspect of the 
means of action, as well as (3) the physical aspect to which 
the character of Objectivity is commonly restricted. We 
shall maintain that these are parts or phases of a complete 
conception of Reality, and that of them, consequently, Objec- 
tivity must be predicated for every essential reason connoted 
by such characterization of the world of things "external" 
to the senses. It has been with this conclusion in mind, 
then, that we have sought to emphasize the frequent serious 
inadequacy, for practical purposes, of the merely physical 
determination of the means in one's environment. 

The principle thus suggested would imply that the 
ethical and economic stages in the one inclusive process 
of reflective attention should be regarded as involving, 

have before him various building materials the ascertained qualities of which are, 
it may be, socially recognized as in a general way fitting them for such a use. There 
is doubtless so much of real foundation for the common notion here referred to. 
But along with the definition of the plan in ethical and economic judgment, along 
with the determination actually to build a house, and a house of a certain specific 
kind, must go further determination of the means in their physical aspects, a deter- 
mination which all the while reacts into the process of determination of the end. 
See below, p. 246, note 3. 



236 Studies in Logical Theory 

when they occur, the same logical function of judgment 
as is operative in the sphere of sense-perception and 
the sciences generally. Ethical and economic factors 
must on occasion be present at the final choice and 
shaping of one's course of conduct, along with the physi- 
cal determinations of environing means and conditions which 
one has made in sense-perception. There is, then, it would 
appear, at least a fair presumption, though not indeed an a 
priori certainty, that these ethical and economic factors or 
conditions have, like the physical, taken form in a judgment- 
process which will admit of profitable analysis in accordance 
with whatever general theory of judgment one may hold as 
valid elsewhere in the field of knowledge. This presumption 
we shall seek to verify. Now, our interest in thus determin- 
ing, first of all, the logical character of these processes will 
readily be understood from this, that, in the present view, 
these are the processes, and the only ones in our experience, 
which are properly to be regarded as processes of Valuation. 
We shall hold that Valuation, and so all consciousness of 
Value, properly so called, must be either ethical or economic ; 
that the only conscious processes in which Values can come 
to definition are these processes of ethical and economic 
judgment. The present theory of Value is, then, essentially 
a logical one, in the sense of holding that Values are deter- 
mined in and by a logical — that is, a judgmental — valuation- 
process and in its details is closely dependent upon the 
general conception of judgment of which the outlines have 
been sketched above. Accordingly, the exposition must pro- 
ceed in the following general order : Assuming the concep- 
tion of judgment which has been presented (which our 
discussion will in several ways further illustrate and so tend 
to confirm), we shall seek to show that the determinations 
made in ethical and economic judgment are in the proper 
sense objective. This will involve, first of all, a statement 



Valuation as a Logical Process 237 

of the conditions under which the ethical and economic 
judgments respectively arise — which statement will serve to 
distinguish the two types of judgment from each other. "We 
shall then proceed to the special analysis of the ethical and 
economic forms from the standpoint of our general theory 
of judgment, thereby establishing in detail the judgmental 
character of these parts of the reflective process. This 
analysis will serve to introduce our interpretation of the 
consciousness of Value as a factor in the conduct and econo- 
my of life. 

II 

Let us then define the problem of the objective reference 
of the valuational judgments by stating, as distinctly as may 
be, the conditions by which ethical and economic deliberation, 
respectively, are prompted. A study of these conditions will 
make it easier to see in what way the judgments reached in 
dealing with them can be objective. 

When will an end, presenting itself in consciousness in 
the manner indicated in our brief analysis of the judgment- 
process, become the center of attention, thereby checking 
the advance, through investigation of the possible means, to 
final overt action? This is the general statement of the 
problem of the typical ethical situation. Manifestly there 
will be no ethical deliberation if the imaged end at once 
turns the attention toward the environment of possible 
means, instead of first of all itself becoming the object 
instead of the director of attention; there will be no sus- 
pension of progress toward final action, excepting such as 
may later come through difficulty in the discovery and 
co-ordination of the means. However, there are cases in 
which the emergence of the end forthwith is followed by a 
check to the reflective process, and the agent shrinks from 
the end presented in imagination as being, let us say, one 



238 Studies in Logical Theory 

forbidden by authority or one repugnant to his own estab- 
lished standards. The end may in such a case disappear at 
once ; very often it will insistently remain. On this latter 
supposition, the simplest possibility will be the development 
of a mere mechanical tension, a "pull and haul" between 
the end, or properly the impulses which it represents, and 
the agent's habit of suppressing impulses of the class to 
which the present one is, perhaps intuitively, recognized as 
belonging. The case is the common one of ' ' temptation " 
on the one side and "principle" or "conscience" on the 
other, and so long as the two forces remain thus in hard-and- 
fast opposition to each other there can be no ethical delib- 
eration or judgment in a proper sense. The standard or 
habit may gain the day by sheer mechanical excess of power, 
or the new impulse, the temptation, may prevail because its 
onset can break down the mechanical resistance. 

Out of such a situation as this, however, genuine ethical 
deliberation may arise on condition that standard and 
"temptation" can lose something of their abstractness and 
their hard-and-fast opposition, and develop into terms of 
concrete meaning. The agent may come to see that the 
end is in some definite way of really vital interest and too 
important to be put aside without consideration. He may, 
of course, in this fall into gross self -sophistication, like the 
drunkard in the classical instance who takes another glass 
to test his self-control and thereby gain assurance, or he 
may act with wisdom and with full sincerity, like Dorothea 
Casaubon when she renounced the impossible task imposed 
by her departed husband. In the moral life one can ask or 
hope for complete exemption from the risk of self-deception 
with as little reason as in scientific research. But however 
this may be, our present interest is in the method, not in par- 
ticular results of ethical reflection. Whether properly so in 
a particular case or not, the imaged end may come to seem 



Valuation as a Logical Process 239 

at least plausibly defensible on grounds of principle which 
serve to sanction certain other modes of conduct to which a 
place is given in the accepted scheme of life; or the end 
may simply press for a relatively independent recognition on 
the very general ground that its emergence represents an 
enlargement and new development of the personality. 1 The 
end may thus cease to stand in the character of blind self- 
assertive impulse, and press its claim as a positive means of 
future moral growth, as bringing freedom from repressive 
and enfeebling restraints and as tending to the reinforce- 
ment of other already valued modes of conduct. On the 
other hand, the standard will cease to stand as mere resist- 
ance and negation, and may discover something of its hidden 
meaning as a product of long experience and slow growth, 
and as perhaps a vital part of the organization of one's pres- 
ent life, not to be touched without grave risk. 

Now, on whichever side the development may first com- 
mence, a like development must soon follow on the other, 
and it is the action and reaction of standard and prospec- 
tive or problematic end upon each other that constitutes 
the process of ethical deliberation or judgment. Just as 
in the typical judgment-process, as sketched above, so also 
here predicate and subject develop each other, when once 
they have given over their first antagonism and come to 
the attitude of reasoning together. The predicate explains 
itself that the subject or new end may be searchingly and 
fairly tested; and under this scrutiny the subject develops 
its full meaning as a course of conduct, thereby prompting 
further analysis and reinterpretation of the standard. But 
this is not the place for detailed analysis of the process; 2 
here we are concerned only to define the type of situation, 

1 In the moral life, as elsewhere, the distinction of deduction and induction is 
one of degree. There is but one type or method of inference, though some inferences 
may approach more closely than do others the limit of pure " subsumption." 

2 See in below. 



24:0 Studies in Logical Theory 

and this we may now do in the following terms: The indis- 
pensable condition of ethical judgment is the presence in 
the agent's mind of at least two rival interesting ends or 
systems of such ends. In the foregoing, the subject of the 
judgment is the new end that has arisen; the predicate or 
"standard" is the symbol for the old ends or values which 
in the tension of the judgment-process must be brought to 
more or less explicit enumeration — and, we must add, 
reconstruction also. Indeed, it is important, even at this 
stage of our discussion, to observe that Predicate and Stand- 
ard are not equivalent in meaning. The predicate, or predi- 
cative side, of judgment is the imagery of control in the 
process, which, as we have seen, develops with the subject 
side; while the term "Standard" connotes the rigid fixity 
which belongs to the inhibiting concept or ideal in the stage 
before the judgment-process proper can begin. The ethical 
judgment-process is, in a word, just the process of recon- 
structing standards — as in its other and corresponding 
aspect it is the process of interpreting new ends. Those who 
oppose measures of social reform or new modes of conduct 
or belief on alleged grounds of "immorality" instinctively 
feel in doing so that the change may make its way more easily 
against a resistance that will candidly explain itself; and, 
on the other side of the social judgment-process, the more 
fanatical know how to turn to good advantage for their 
propaganda the bitterness or contempt of those who repre- 
sent the established order. On both sides there are those 
who trust more in mechanical "pull and haul" than in the 
intrinsic merits of their cause. 

Thus it is by encountering some rival end or entire sys- 
tem of ends, as symbolized by an ideal, that a new end 
emerging out of impulse comes to stand for an agent, as 
the center of a problem of conduct, and so to occupy the 
center of attention. And it thereby becomes an Object, as 



Valuation as a Logical Process 241 

we shall hold, which must be more fully defined in order 
that it may be valued, and accordingly be held to warrant a 
determinate attitude toward itself on the agent's part. We 
have now to define in the same general terms the typical 
economic situation. 

In economic theory as in common thought it is not the 
contemplated act of applying certain means to the attain- 
ment of an end regarded as desirable that functions as the 
logical subject of valuation. The thing or object valued in 
the economic situation is one's present wealth, whether 
material or immaterial, one's services or labor — whatever one 
gives in exchange or otherwise sets apart for the attainment 
of a desired end or, proximately, to secure possession of the 
necessary and sufficient means to the attainment of a desired 
end. The object of attention in the valuing process is here 
not itself an end of action. In this respect the economic type 
of judgment is like the physical, for in both the object to be 
valued is a certain means which one is seeking to adapt to 
some more or less definitely imaged purpose ; or a condition 
of which one wishes, likewise for some special purpose, to 
take advantage. The ultimate goal of all judgment is the 
determination of a course of conduct looking toward an 
end, and our present problem may accordingly be stated in 
the following terms : Under what circumstances in the 
judgment-process does it become necessary to the defini- 
tion and attainment of an end as yet vague and indeter- 
minate that the requisite means, as in part already physically 
determined, should be further scrutinized in attention and 
determined from the economic point of view? Or, in a 
word: What is the "jurisdiction" of the economic point of 
view? 

For ordinary judgments of sense-perception the presence 
in consciousness of a single unquestioned end is the adequate 
occasion, as our analysis (assuming its validity) has shown. 



242 Studies in Logical Theory 

For ethical judgment we have seen that the presence of con- 
flicting ends is necessary; and we shall now hold that this 
condition is necessary, though not, without a certain quali- 
fication, adequate, for the economic type as well. If an 
imaged end can hold its place in consciousness without a 
rival, and the physical means of attaining it have been found 
and co-ordinated, then the use or consumption of the means 
must inevitably follow, without either ethical or economic 
judgment ; for, to paraphrase the saying of Professor James, 
nothing but an end can displace or inhibit effort toward 
another end. The economic situation differs, then, from the 
ethical in this, that the end or system of ends entering into 
competition with the one for the time being of chief and pri- 
mary interest has been brought to consciousness through ref- 
erence to those "physical" means which already have been 
determined as necessary to this latter end. The conflict of ends 
in the economic situation, that is to say, is not due to a direct 
and intrinsic incompatibility between them. Where there 
manifestly is such incompatibility, judgment will be of the 
ethical type — as when building the house involves the fore- 
closure of a mortgage, and so, in working an injury jto the 
holder of the site, may do violence to one's ideal of friend- 
ship or of more special obligation; or when an impulse to 
intemperate self-indulgence is met by one's ideal of social 
usefulness. In cases such as these one clearly sees, or can 
on reflection come to see, in what way an evil result to per- 
sonal character will follow upon the imminent misdeed, and 
in what way suppression of the momentary impulse will con- 
serve the entire approved and established way of life. Very 
often, however, the conflicting ends are related in no such 
mutually exclusive way. Each may be in itself permissible 
and compatible with the other, and, so far as any possible 
ethical discrimination can determine, there is no ground for 
choice between them. Thus it is only through the fact that 



Valuation as a Logical Process 243 

both ends are dependent upon a limited supply of means 
that one would, for example, ever bring together and deliber- 
ately oppose in judgment the purpose of making additions 
to his library and the necessity of providing a store of fuel 
for the winter. Both ends in such a case are in themselves 
indeed permissible in a general way, but they may very well 
not both of them be economically possible, and hence, for 
the person in question and in the presence of the economic 
conditions which confront him, not, in the last analysis, both 
ethically possible. When there is a conflict between two 
ends that stand in close organic relation in the sense 
explained above, the problem is an ethical one ; when the con- 
flict is, in the sense explained, one of competition between 
ends ethically permissible — not at variance, either one, that 
is, with other ends directly — for the whole or for a share 
of one's supply of means, the problem is of the economic 
type. 1 

There are three typical cases in which economic judg- 
ment or valuation of the means is necessary, and the enu- 
meration of these will make clear the relation between the 

i It is no part of the present view that the ends which enter into economic conflict 
are incapable of becoming organic and intrinsically interrelated members of the 
provisional system of life. On the contrary, the very essence of our contention is 
that adjustment established between two such conflicting ends in economic judgment 
is in itself ethical and a member of the provisional system of the individual's ends of 
life, and will stand as such, subject to modification through changes elsewhere in 
the system, so long as the economic conditions in view of which it was determined 
remained unchanged. The " mutual exclusiveness " of the ends in ethical delibera- 
tion is simply the correlate of a relative fixity in certain of the conditions of life. A 
man's command over the means of obtaining such things as books and fuel varies 
much and often suddenly in a society like ours from time to time ; but, on the other 
hand, his physical condition, his intelligence, his powers of sympathy, and his 
spiritual capacity for social service commonly do not. Hence there can be and is a 
certain more or less definite and permanent comprehensive scheme of conduct mor- 
ally obligatory upon him so far as the exercise of these latter faculties is concerned, 
but so far as his conduct depends upon the variable conditions mentioned, it cannot 
be prescribed in general terms, nor will any provisional ideal of moral selfhood 
admit any such prescriptions as integral elements into itself. The moral self is an 
ideal construct based upon these fixed conditions of life — conditions so fixed that 
the spiritual furtherance or deterioration likely to result from certain modes of con- 
duct involving and affecting them can be estimated directly and with relative ease 
by the " ethical" method of judgment. Implied in such a construct is, of course, a 



244 Studies in Logical Theory 

ethical and the economic types of judgment: (1) First may 
be mentioned the case in which ethical deliberation has 
apparently reached its end in the formation of apian of action 
which, so far as one can see, on ethical grounds is unobjec- 
tionable. A definite " temptation " may have been overcome, 
or out of a more complex situation a satisfactory ethical com- 
promise or readjustment may have been developed with much 
difficulty. Now, there are very often cases in which such a 
course of action still may not be entered on without further 
hesitation ; for, if the plan be one requiring for its working 
out the use of material means, the fact of an existing limita- 
tion of one's supply of means must bring hitherto unthought of 
ends into conflict with it. There are doubtless many situa- 
tions in which one's moral choice may be carried into prac- 
tice without consideration of ways and means, as when one 
forgives an injury or holds his instinctive nature under dis- 
cipline in the effort to attain an ascetic or a genuinely social 
ideal of character. But more often than the moral rigorist 
cares to see, questions of an economic nature must be raised 
after the ethical "evidence is all in" — questions which are 
probably more trying to a sensitive moral nature than those 
more dramatic situations in which the real perils of self- 
sophistication are vastly less, and the simpler, sharper defini- 

reference to certain relatively permanent social and also physical conditions. In so 
far as society and physical nature, and for that matter the individual's own nature, 
are variable, these are the subjects of "scientific" or "factual" judgments inci- 
dental to the determination of problems by the "economic" method — problems, 
that is, for which no general answer, through reference to a more or less definite and 
stable working concept of the self, can be given. Thus our knowledge of the physi- 
cal universe is largely, if not chiefly, incidental to and conditioned by our economic 
experience. Again, our economic judgments are in every case determinative of the 
self in situations in which, as presented by (perhaps even momentarily) variable con- 
ditions, physical, social, or personal, the ethical method is inapplicable. In a social- 
istic state, in which economic conditions might be more stable than in our present 
one, many problems in consumption which now are economic in one sense would be 
ethical because admitting of solution by reference to the type of self presupposed 
in the established state program of production and distribution. Even now it is not 
easy to specify an economic situation the solution of which is absolutely indifferent 
ethically. There is a possibility of intemperance even in so "aesthetic" an indul- 
gence as Turkish rugs. 



Valuation as a Logical Pkocess 245 

tion of the issue makes possible a less difficult, though a more 
decisive and edifying, victory. (2) In the second place are 
those cases in which the end that has emerged is without 
conspicuous moral quality, because, although it may represent 
some worthy impulse, it has not been obliged to make its 
way to acceptance against the resistance of desires less 
worthy than itself. This is the ideal case of economic theory 
in which "moral distinctions are irrelevant," and the eco- 
nomic man is free, according to the myth, to perform his 
hedonistic calculations without thought of moral scruple. The 
end ethically acceptable in itself, like the enriching of one's 
library, must, when the means are limited, divert a portion of 
the means from other uses, and will thus, through reference 
to the indispensable means, engage in conflict with other ends 
quite remotely, if in the agent's knowledge at all, related 
with itself. (3) Finally we reach the limit of apparent free- 
dom from ethical considerations in the operations of business 
institutions, and perhaps especially in those of large business 
corporations. Apart from the routine operations of a business 
which involve no present exercise of the valuing judgment, 
there are constantly in such institutions new projects which 
must be considered, and which commonly must involve 
revaluation of the means. In this revaluation the principle 
of greatest revenue is supposed to be the sole criterion, 
regardless of other personal or social points of view from 
which confessedly the measure might be considered. But 
such a supposition, however true to the facts of current 
business practice it may be, we must hold to be an abstrac- 
tion when viewed from the standpoint of the social life at 
large, and hence no real exception to our general principle. 
The economic and the ethical situations differ, as types, only 
in the closeness of relation between the ends that are in con- 
flict and in the manner in which the ends are first brought 
into conflict — not in respect of the intrinsic nature of the 



• 



L 



246 Studies in Logical Theory 

ends which are involved in them. 1 It is this difference which, 
as we shall see, explains why ethical valuation must be of 
ends, and economic valuation, on the other hand, of means. 

We have yet to see in what way valuation of the means 
of action can serve to resolve a difficulty of the type which 
has thus been designated as Economic. The question must be 
deferred until a more detailed analysis of the economic judg- 
ment-process can be undertaken. It is enough for our pres- 
ent purpose to note that the subject of valuation in this 
process is the means, and to see that under the typical con- 
ditions which have been described some further determina- 
tion of the means than the merely physical one of their 
factual availability- for the competing ends is needed. 2 
Physically and mechanically the means are available for each 
one of the ends or groups of ends in question ; the pressing 
problem is to determine for which one of the ends, if any, 
or to what compromise or readjustment of certain of the 
ends or all of them, the means at hand are in an economic 
sense most properly available. 3 

1 Accordingly there can be no distinction of ends, some as ethical, others as eco- 
nomic, but from an ethical standpoint indifferent, and yet others as amenable 
neither to ethical nor to economic judgment. The type of situation and the corre- 
sponding mode of judgment employed determines whether an end shall be for the 
time being ethical, economic, or of neither sort conspicuously. 

2 The right of Prudence to rank among the virtues cannot, on our present view, 
be questioned. Economic judgment, though it must be valuation of means, is essen- 
tially choice of ends — and, as would appear, choice of a sort peculiarly difficult by 
reason of the usually slight intrinsic relation between the ends involved and also 
by reason of the absence of effective points of view for comparison. Culture, as 
Emerson remarks, " sees prudence not to be a several faculty, but a name for wis- 
dom and virtue conversing with the body and its wants." And again, " The spurious 
prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sots and cowards, and is the subject 

of all comedy [The true prudence] takes the laws of the world whereby 

man's being is conditioned, as they are, and keeps these laws that it may enjoy their 
proper good " (Essay on Prudence). 

3 Here again we purposely use inaccurate language. Strictly, the ends here 
spoken of as competing are such, we must say, only because they are as yet in a 
measure indeterminate, wanting in "clearness," and are not yet understood in their 
true economic character ; likewise the means are wanting in that final shade or 
degree of physical and mechanical determinateness which they are presently to 
possess as means to a finally determinate economic end. Thus economic judgment, 
by which is to be understood determination of an end of action by the economic 



Valuation as a Logical Process 247 

From this preliminary discussion of the ethical and eco- 
nomic situations we must now pass to discuss the objectivity 
of the judgments by which the agent meets the difficulties 
which such situations as these present. We shall seek to 
show that these judgments are constructive of an objective 
order of reality. It will be necessary in the first place to 
determine the psychological conditions of the more commonly 
recognized experience of Objectivity in the restricted sphere 
of sense-perception. There might otherwise remain a certain 
antecedent presumption against the thesis which we wish to 
establish even after the direct argument had been presented. 1 

Ill 

Common-sense and natural science certainly tend to iden- 
tify the objectively real with the existent in space and time. 
The physical universe is held to be palpably real in a way 
in which nothing not presented in sensuous terms can be. 
To most minds doubtless it is difficult to understand why 
Plato should have ascribed to the Ideas a higher degree of 
reality than that possessed by the particular objects of sense- 
perception, and still more difficult to understand his ascrip- 
tion of real existence to such Ideas as those of Beauty, 
Justice, and the Good. There is a certain apparent stability 
in a universe presented in "immediate" sense-perception — 
a universe with which we are in constant bodily intercourse 

method and in accordance with economic principles, involves in general physical 
re-determination of the means. The means which at the outset of the present eco- 
nomic judgment-process appear as physically available indifferently for either of the 
tentative ends under consideration are only in a general way the same means for 
knowledge as they will be when the economic problem has been solved. They are, 
so far as now determinate, the outcome of former physical judgment-processes inci- 
dental to the definition of economic ends in former situations like the present. 

1 In our discussion of this preliminary question there is no attempt to furnish 
what might be called an analysis of the consciousness of objectivity. This has been 
undertaken by various psychologists in recent well-known contributions to the sub- 
ject. For our purpose it is necessary only to specify the intellectual and practical 
attitude out of which the consciousness of objectivity arises ; not the sensory "ele- 
ments" or factors involved in its production as an experience. 



248 Studies in Logical Theory 

— that seems not to belong to a mere order of relations 
which, if known in any sense, is not known to us through 
the senses. Moreover, knowledge of the physical world is 
felt to possess a higher degree of certainty than does any 
knowledge we can have of supposed economic or moral truth, 
or of economic or moral standards. Of such knowledge one 
is disposed to say, as Mr. Spencer does of metaphysics, that 
at the best it presupposes a long and elaborate inferential 
process which, as long, is likely to be faulty ; whereas physi- 
cal truth is immediate or else, when inference is involved in 
it, easy to be tested by appeal to immediate facts. Physi- 
cal reality is a reality that can be seen and handled and felt 
as offering resistance, and this is evidence of objectivity of a 
sort not to be found in other spheres of knowledge for which 
the like claim is made. 

The force of these impressions (and it would not be diffi- 
cult to find stronger statements in the history of scientific 
and ethical nominalism) diminishes if one tries to determine 
in what consists that objectivity which they uncritically 
assume as given in sense-perception. For one must recog- 
nize that not all our possible modes of sense-experience are 
equally concerned in the presentation of this perceived 
objective world. Certain sensory "quales" are immediately 
referred to outward objects as belonging to them. Certain 
others are, in a way, "inward," either not more definitely local- 
ized at all or merely localized in the sense-organ which 
mediates them. Now, the reason for this difference cannot 
lie in the content of the various sense-qualities abstractly 
taken. A visual sensation, apart from the setting in which 
it occurs in common experience, can be no more objective in 
its reference — indeed, can have no more reference of any 
kind — than the least definite and instructive organic sensa- 
tion. For the degree of distinctness with which one dis- 
criminates sense-qualities depends upon the number and 



Valuation as a Logical Process 249 

importance of the interpretative associations which it is 
important from time to time to "connect" with them; or, con- 
versely, the sense-qualities are not seZ/-discriminating in 
virtue of an intrinsic objective reference or meaning which 
each possesses and which drives it apart from all the rest. 
Indeed, an intrinsic meaning, if a sensation could possess 
one, would not only be superfluous in the development of 
knowledge, but, as likely to be mistaken for the acquired or 
functional meaning, even seriously confusing. 1 

Now, it must be granted that, if the "simple idea of sen- 
sation" is without objective reference, no association with 
it of similarly abstract sensations can supply the lack. A 
"movement" sensation, or a tactual, having in itself no such 
meaning, cannot merely by being "associated" with a simi- 
larly meaningless visual sensation endow this latter with 
reference to an object. Objective reference is, in fact, not a 
sensuous thing ; it is not a conscious "element," nor does it 
arise from any combination or fusion of such. It is neither 
in the association of ideas as a constituent member, nor does 
it belong to the association considered as a sequence of 
psychical states. Instead, in our present view, it belongs to or 
arises out of the activity through which and with reference 

i So, on the other hand, our vague organic sensations are possibly more instruct- 
ive as they are, for their own purpose, than they would be if more sharply dis- 
criminated and complexly referred. 

For convenience we here meet the view under consideration with its own termi- 
nology ; we by no means wish to be understood as indorsing this terminology as psy- 
chologically correct. The sense-quality of which we read in " structural psychology " 
is, we hold, not a structural unit at all, but in fact a highly abstract development out 
of that unorganized whole of sensory experience in which reflective attention begins. 
There is, for example, no such thing as the simple unanalyzable sense-quality " red " 
in consciousness until judgment has proceeded far enough to have constructed a 
definite and measured experience which may be symbolized as " object-before-me- 
possessing-the-attribute-red." In place of the original sensory total-experience we 
now have a more or less developed perceptual (i.e., judgmental) total-experience. 
It is an instance of the " psychological fallacy" to interpret what are really elements 
of meaning in a perceived object constructed in judgment (for this is the true nature 
of the " simple idea of sensation " or " sense-element ") as so many bits of psychical 
material which were isolated from each other at the outset, and have been externally 
joined together in their present combination. 



250 Studies in Logical Theoky 

to which associations are first of all established. It is an 
aspect or kind of reference or category under which any 
sense-quality or datum is apperceived when it is held apart 
from the stream of consciousness in order that it may receive 
new meaning as a stimulus ; and a sensation functioning in 
such a "state of consciousness" 1 is a psychical phenomenon 
very different from the conscious element of " analytical" 
psychology. The extent to which it is true that the objec- 
tive world of sense-perception is pre-eminently visual and 
tactual is then merely an evidence of the extent to which 
the exigencies of the life-process have required finer sense- 
discrimination for the sake of more refined reaction within 
these spheres as compared with others. Our conclusion, 
then, must be that the consciousness of objectivity is not 
as such sensuous, even as given in our perception of the 
material world. The world, as viewed from the standpoint 
of a particular, practical emergency, is an objective world, 
not in virtue of its having a "sensuous" or a "material" 
aspect as something existent per se, but because it is a 
world of stimuli in course of definition for the guidance of 
activity. 2 

It will be well to give further positive exposition of the 
meaning of the view thus stated. To return once more to 

1 The phrase is Kulpe's and is used in his sense of consciousness taken as a whole, 
as, for example, attentive, apperceptive, volitional, rather than in the sense made 
familiar by Spencer and others. 

2 The foregoing discussion is in many ways similar to Brentano's upon the same 
subject. In discussing his first class of modes of consciousness, the Vorstellungen, 
he says : " We find no contrasts between presentations excepting those of the objects 
to which the presentations refer. Only in so far as warm and cold, light and dark, 
a high note and a low, form contrasts can we speak of the corresponding presenta- 
tions as contrasted ; and, in general, there is in any other sense than this no contrast 
within the entire range of these conscious processes" (Psych ologie vom empi- 
risehen Standpunkte, Bd. I, p. 29) . This may stand as against any attempt to find 
contrast between abstract sense-qualities taken apart from their objective reference. 
What is, however, the ground of distinction between the presented objects? Appar- 
ently this must be answered in the last resort as above. In this sense we should need 
finally to interpret "sensuous" and "material" in terms of objectivity as above 
defined, rather than the reverse. They are cases in or specifications of the deter- 
mination of adequate stimuli. 



Valuation as a Logical Process 251 

our fundamental psychological conception, knowledge is 
essentially relevant to the solution of particular problems of 
more or less urgency and of various kinds and figures in the 
solution of such problems as the assemblage of consciously 
recognized symbols or stimuli by which various actions are 
suggested. The object as known is therefore not the same 
as the object as apprehended in other possible modes of being 
conscious of it. The workman who is actually using his 
tool in shaping his material, or the warrior who is actually 
using his weapon in the thick of combat, is, if conscious of 
these objects at all (and doubtless he may be conscious of 
them at such times), not conscious of them as objects — as 
the one might be, for example, in adjusting the tool for a 
particular kind of use, and the other in giving a keen edge 
to his blade. Under these latter circumstances the tool or 
weapon is an object, and its observed condition, viewed in 
the light of a purpose of using the object in a certain way, 
is regarded as properly suggesting certain changes or 
improvements. And likewise will the tool or the weapon 
have an objective character in the agent's apprehension in 
the moment of identifying and selecting it from among a 
number of others, or even in the act of reaching for it, espe- 
cially if it is inconveniently placed. But in the act of freely 
using one's objective means the category of the objective 
plays no part in consciousness, because at such times there 
is no judgment respecting the means — because there is no 
sufficient occasion for the isolation of certain conscious ele- 
ments from the rest of the stream of conscious experience 
to be defined as stimuli to certain needed responses. Such 
isolation will not normally take place so long as the reac- 
tions suggested by the conscious contents involved in the 
experience are fully adequate to the situation. Objects are 
not normally held apart as such from the stream of conscious- 
ness in which they are presented and recognized as possess- 



252 Studies in Logical Theory 

ing qualities warranting certain modes of conduct, except- 
ing as it has become necessary to the attainment of the 
agent's purposes to modify or reconstruct his activity. 1 

Are things, then, apprehended as objective in virtue of 
the agent's attitude toward them, or is the agent's attitude 
in a typical case grounded upon an antecedent determination 
of the objectivity of the things in question? We must 
answer, in the first place, that there can be no such antece- 
dent determination. We may, it is true, speak of believing, 
on the evidence of sight or touch, that a certain object is 
really present before us. But neither sight nor touch pos- 
sesses in itself, as a particular sense- quality, any objective 
meaning. If touch is par excellence the sense of the objec- 
tive and the appeal to touch the test of objectivity, this can 
only be because touch is the sense most closely and intimately 
connected in our experience with action. After any interval 
of hesitation and judgment, action begins with contact with 
and manipulation of the physical means which have been 
under investigation. Not only is touch the proximate stimu- 
lus and guide to manipulation, but all relevant knowledge 
which has been gained in any judgment-process, through the 
other senses, and especially through sight, must ultimately 
be reducible to terms of touch or other contact sense. The 
alleged tactual evidence of objectivity is, then, rather a con- 
firmation than a difficulty for our present view. In short, 
we must dismiss as impossible the hypothesis that there can 
be a consciousness of objectivity which is not dependent 
upon and an expression of primary antecedent tendencies 
toward motor response to the presented stimulus. It is our 
attitude toward the prospective stimulus that mediates the 
consciousness of an object standing over against us. 

So far, indeed, is it from being true that objectivity is a 

1 In this connection reference may be made to the well-known disturbing effect 
of the forced introduction of attention to details into established sensori-motor 
co-ordinations, such as " typewriting," playing upon the piano, and the like. 



Valuation as a Logical Process 253 

matter for special determination antecedently to action that 
by common testimony the conviction of objectivity comes to 
ns quite irresistibly. The object forces itself upon us, as we 
say, and "whether we will or no" we must recognize its 
presence there before us and its independence of any choice 
of ours or of our knowledge. In the cautious manipulation 
of an instrument, in the laborious shaping of some refrac- 
tory material, in the performance of any delicate or difficult 
task, one's sense of the objectivity of the thing with which 
one works is as obtrusive as remorse or grief, and as little to 
be shaken off. We shall revert to this suggested analogy at 
a later stage in our discussion. 

We are now in a position to define more precisely the 
nature of the conditions in which the sense of objectivity 
emerges, and this will bring us to the point at which the 
objective import of our economic and ethical judgments can 
profitably be discussed. We have said that the world of 
the physical is objective, not in virtue of the sensuous terms 
in which it is presented, but because it is a world of stimuli 
for the guidance of human conduct. Under what circum- 
stances, then, are we conscious of stimuli in their capacity 
of guides or incentives or grounds of conduct ? And the 
answer must be that stimuli are interpreted as such, and so 
take on the character of objectivity, when their precise char- 
acter as stimuli is still in doubt, and they must therefore 
receive further definition. 

For example, a man pursued by a wild beast must find 
some means of escape or defense, and, seeing a tree which 
he may climb or a stone which he may hurl, will inspect 
these as well as may be with reference to their fitness for the 
intended purpose. It is at just such moments as these, 
then, that physical things become things for knowledge and 
take on their stubbornly objective character — that is to say, 
when they are essentially problematic. Now, in order that 



254 Studies in Logical Theory 

any physical thing may be thus problematic and so possess 
objective character for knowledge, it must (1) be in part 
understood, and so prompt certain more or less indiscrimi- 
nate responses; and (2) be in part as yet not understood — 
in such wise that, while there are certain indefinite or 
unmeasured tendencies on the agent's part to respond to the 
object — climb the tree or hurl the stone — there is also a 
certain failure of complete unity in the co-ordination of 
these activities, a certain contradiction between different 
suggestions of conduct which different observed qualities of 
the tree or stone may give, and so hesitation and arrest of 
final action. The pursued man views the tree suspiciously 
before trusting himself to its doubtful strength, or weighs 
well the stone and tests its rough edges before pausing to 
throw it. Thus, to state the matter negatively, there are 
two possible situations in which the sense of objectivity, if 
it emerge into consciousness at all, cannot long continue. 
An object — as, for example, some strange shrub or flower — 
which, in the case we are supposing, may attract the pur- 
sued wayfarer's notice, may awaken no responses relevant 
to the emergency in which the agent finds himself; and it 
will therefore forthwith lapse from consciousness. Or, on 
the other hand, the object, as the tree or stone, may rightly 
or wrongly seem to the agent so completely satisfactory, or, 
rather, in effect may be so, as instantly to prompt the action 
which otherwise would come, if at all, only after a period of 
more or less prolonged attention. In neither of these cases, 
then, is there a problematic object. In the one the thing in 
question is wholly apart from any present interest, and 
therefore lapses. In the other case the thing seen is com- 
prehended on the instant with reference to its general use 
and merges immediately into the main stream of the agent's 
consciousness without having been an object of express 
attention. In neither case, therefore, is there hesitation 



Valuation as a Logical Process 255 

with reference to the thing in question — any conflict 
between inconsiderate positive responses prompted by cer- 
tain features of the object and inhibitions due to recognition 
of its shortcomings. In a word, in neither case is there any 
judgment or possibility of judgment, and hence no sense of 
objectivity. We can have consciousness of an object, in the 
strict sense of the term, only when some part or general 
aspect of the total situation confronting an agent excites or 
seems to warrant responses which must be held in check for 
further determination. In terms of consciousness, an object 
is always an object of attention — that is, an object which is 
under process of development and reconstruction with refer- 
ence to an end. 

An inhibited impulse to react in a more or less definite 
way to a stimulus is, then, the adequate condition of the 
emergence in consciousness of the sense of objectivity. So 
long as an activity is proceeding without check or interrup- 
tion, and no conflict develops between motor responses 
prompted by different parts or aspects of the situation, the 
agent's consciousness will not present the distinction of 
Objective and Subjective. The mode of being conscious 
which accompanies free and harmonious activity of this sort 
may be exemplified by such experiences as aesthetic apprecia- 
tion, sensuous enjoyment, acquiescent absorption in pleasur- 
able emotion, or even intellectual processes of the mechanical 
sort, such as easy computation or the solution of simple alge- 
braic problems — processes in which no more serious diffi- 
culty is encountered than suffices to stimulate a moderate 
degree of interest. If, however, reverting to the illustration, 
our present need for a stone calls for some property which 
the stone we have seized appears to lack, consciousness must 
pass over into the reflective or attentive phase. The stone 
will now figure as an object possessing certain qualities which 
render it in a general way relevant to the emergency before 



256 Studies in Logical Theoky 

us. A needed quality is missing, and this defect must hold 
in check all the imminent responses until discovery of the 
missing quality can set them free. In a word, the stone as 
known to us has assumed the station of subject in a judgment- 
process, and our effort is, if possible, to assign to it a new 
predicate relevant to our present situation. Psychologically 
speaking, the stone is an object, a stimulus to which we are 
endeavoring to find warrant for responding in some new or 
reconstructed way. 

In this process we must assume, then, first of all, an 
interest on the agent's part in the situation as a whole, 
which in the first place, in terms of the illustration, makes 
the pursued one note the tree or stone — which might 
otherwise have escaped his notice as completely as any 
passing cloud or falling leaf — and suggests what particu- 
lar qualities or adaptabilities should be looked for in it. 
Given this interest in "making something" out of the total 
situation as explaining the recognition of the stone and 
the impulse to seize and hurl it, we find the sense of the 
stone's objectivity emerging just in the arrest of the undis- 
criminating impulse. The stone must have a certain mean- 
ing as a stimulus first of all, but it must be a meaning not 
yet quite defined and certain of acceptance. The stone will 
be an object only if, and so long as, the undiscriminating 
impulses suggested by these elements of meaning are held 
in check in order that they may be ordered, supplemented, 
or made more definite. It is, then, the essence of the pres- 
ent contention that physical things are objective in our 
experience in virtue of their recognized inadequacy as 
means or incentives of action — an inadequacy which, in 
turn, is felt as such in so far as we are seeking to use them 
as means or grounds of conduct, or to avail ourselves of 
them as conditions, in coping with the general situation 
from which our attention has abstracted them. 



Valuation as a Logical Process 257 

From this analysis of the conditions of the consciousness 
of objectivity we must now proceed to inquire whether in the 
typical ethical and economic situations, as they have been 
described, essentially these same conditions are present. 

In the ethical situation, according to our statement, the 
subject of the judgment (the object of attention) is the new 
end which has just been presented in imagination, and we 
have now to see that the agent's attitude toward this end is 
for our present purpose essentially the same as toward a 
physical object which is under scrutiny. For just as the 
physical object is such for consciousness because it is partly 
relevant (whether in the way of furthering or of hindering) 
to the agent's purpose, but as yet partly not understood 
from this point of view, so the imaged end may likewise be 
ambiguous. The agent's moral purpose may be the (very 
likely mythical) primitive one of which we read in "associa- 
tional" discussions of the moral consciousness — that of avoid- 
ing punishment. It may be that of "imitative," sympathetic 
obedience to authority — a sentiment whose fundamental 
importance for ethical psychology has long remained with- 
out due recognition. 1 It may be loyalty to an ideal of 
conscience, or yet again a purpose of enlargement and 
development of personality. But on either supposition the 
compatibility of the end with the prevailing standard or 
principle of decision may be a matter of doubt and so call for 
judgment. The problem will, of course, be a problem in the 
full logical sense as involving judgment of the type described 
in our discussion of the ethical situation only when the atti- 
tudes of obedience to authority and to fixed ideals have been 
outgrown ; but, on the other hand, as might be shown, it is 
just the inevitable increasing use of judgment with refer- 
ence to these formulations of the moral life which gradually 

i Cf. Professor Baldwin's Social and Ethical Interpretations, and Professor 
McGilvary's recent paper on "Moral Obligation," Philosophical Review, Vol. XI, 
especially pp. 349 f . 



258 Studies in Logical Theory 

undermines them and, by a kind of "internal dialectic" of 
the moral consciousness, brings the agent to recognition as 
well as to more perfect practice of a logical or deliberative 
method. 

The end, then, is, in the typical ethical situation, an 
object which one must determine by analysis and reconstruc- 
tion as a means or condition of moral "integrity" and prog- 
ress. It is, accordingly, in the second place, an object 
upon whose determination a definite activity of the agent is 
regarded by him as depending. Just as in the physical 
judgment-process the object is set off over against the self 
and regarded as a given thing which, when once completely 
defined, will prompt certain movements of the body, so here 
the contemplated act is an object which, when fully defined 
in all its relevant psychological and sociological bearings, 
will prompt a definite act of rejection or acceptance by the 
self. Now, it might be shown, as we believe, that the com- 
plete psychological and sociological definition of the course 
of conduct is in truth the full explanation of the choice; 
there is no separate reaction of the moral self to which the 
course of conduct is, as defined, an external stimulus. So 
also in the sphere of physical judgment complete definition 
passes over into action — or the appreciative mode of con- 
sciousness which accompanies action — without breach of 
continuity. But within the judgment-process in all its forms 
there is in the agent's apprehension this characteristic fea- 
ture of apparent separation between the subject as an objec- 
tive thing presently to be known and used or responded to, 
and the predicate as a response yet to be perfected in details, 
but at the right time, when one has proper warrant, to be set 
free. It is not our purpose here to speak of metaphysical 
interpretations or misinterpretations of this functional dis- 
tinction ; but only to argue from the presence of the distinc- 
tion in the ethical type of judgment as in the physical as 



Valuation as a Logical Process 259 

genuine an objectivity for the ethical type as can be ascribed 
to the other. The ethical judgment is objective in the sense 
that in it an object — an imaged mode of conduct taken as 
such — is presented for development to a degree of adequacy 
at which one can accept it or reject it as a mode of conduct. 
The ethical predicates Right and Wrong, Good and Bad, 
each pair representing a particular standpoint, as we shall 
later see, signify this accepting or rejecting movement of 
the self, this "act of will," of which, as an act in due time 
to be performed, the agent is more or less acutely conscious 
in the course of moral judgment. 

In the economic situation also, as above described, there 
is present the requisite condition of the consciousness of 
objectivity. Here, as in the ethical situation, an object is 
presented which one must redetermine, and toward which 
one must presently act in a way likewise to be determined in 
detail in judgment. We shall defer until a later stage dis- 
cussion of the reason why this subject of the economic judg- 
ment is the means in the activity that is in progress. We 
are not yet ready to show that the means must be the center 
of attention under the conditions which have been specified. 
Here we need only note the fact of common experience that 
economic judgment does center upon the means, and show 
that in this fact is given the objective status of the means in 
the judgment-process ; for the economic problem is essentially 
that of withdrawing a portion, a " marginal increment," of 
the means from some use or set of uses to which they are at 
present set apart, and applying it to the new end that has 
come to seem, on ethical grounds at least, desirable ; and we 
may regard this diversion as the essentially economic act 
which, in the agent's apprehension during judgment, is con- 
tingent upon the determination of the means. The object 
as economic is accordingly the means, or a marginal portion 
of the means, which is to be thus diverted (or, so to speak, 



260 Studies in Logical Theory 

exposed to the likelihood of such diversion), and its deter- 
mination must be of such a nature as to show the economic 
urgency, or at least the permissibility, of this diversion. 
Into this determination, manifestly, the results of much 
auxiliary inquiry into physical properties of the means must 
enter — such properties, for example, as have to do with its 
technological fitness for its present use as compared with pos- 
sible substitutes, and its adaptability for the new use pro- 
posed. Taking the word in the broad sense of object of 
thought, it is always an object in space and time to which 
the economic judgment assigns an economic value ; and it is 
true here (just the same is true, mutatis mutandis, of the 
psychological and sociological determinations necessary to 
the fixation of ethical value) that the economically motivated 
physical determination of the objective means from the 
standpoint of the emergency in hand is the full "causal" 
explanation of the economic act. It must, however, be care- 
fully observed that this physical determination is in the 
typical case altogether incidental, from the agent's stand- 
point, to the assignment of an economic character or value 
to the means — a value which will at the close of the judg- 
ment come to conscious recognition. As we shall see, the 
process is directed throughout by reference to economic prin- 
ciples and standards, and what shall be an adequate deter- 
mination in the case depends upon the precision with which 
these are formulated and the strenuousness with which they 
are applied. In a word, the economic judgment assigns to 
the physical object, as known at the outset, a new non- 
physical character. Throughout the judgment-process this 
character is gaining in distinctness, and at the end it is 
accepted as the Value of the means, as warrant for the 
diversion of them to the new use which has been decided on. 1 

i Manifestly, as indicated just above, this accepted value of the object implies 
fuller physical knowledge of the object than was possessed at the outset of the eco- 
nomic judgment. See above, p. 234, note ; p. 246, note 3 ; and p, 271, below. 



Valuation as a Logical Process 261 

We have now to consider whether in the actual ethical 
and economic experience of men there is any direct evidence 
confirming the conclusions which our logical analysis of the 
respective situations would appear to require. Can any 
phases of the total experience of working out a satisfactory 
course of conduct in these typical emergencies be appealed 
to as actually showing at least some tacit recognition that 
these types of judgment present each one an order of reality 
or an aspect of the one reality ? 

In the first place, then, one must recognize that in the 
agent's own apprehension a judgment of value has some- 
thing more than a purely subjective meaning. It is never 
offered, by one who has taken the trouble to work it out 
more or less laboriously and then to express it in terms 
which are certainly objective, as a mere announcement of de 
facto determination or a registration of arbitrary whim and 
caprice. One no more means to announce a groundless 
choice or a choice based upon pleasure felt in contemplation 
of the imaged end than in his judgments concerning the 
physical universe he means to affirm coexistences and 
sequences, agreements and disagreements, of " ideas " as 
psychical happenings. That there is an ethical or economic 
truth to which one can appeal in doubtful cases is, indeed, 
the tacit assumption in all criticism of another's deliberate 
conduct; the contrary assumption, that criticism is merely 
the opposition of one's own private prejudice or desire to the 
equally private prejudice or desire of another, would render 
all criticism and mutual discussion of ethical problems mean- 
ingless and futile in the plain man's apprehension as in the 
philosopher's. For the plain man has a spontaneous confi- 
dence in his knowledge of the material world which makes 
him look askance at any alleged analysis of his sense- 
perceptions and scientific judgments into "associations of 
ideas," and the same confidence, or something very like it, 



262 Studies in Logical Theory 

attaches to judgments of these other types. It may perhaps 
be easier (though the concession is a very doubtful one) to 
destroy a naive confidence in the objectivity of moral truth 
than a like confidence in scientific knowledge, but it must 
be remembered that the plain man's sense of the urgency, at 
least of ethical problems, if not of economic, is commonly less 
acute than for the physical. In the plain man's experience 
serious moral problems are infrequent — problems of the 
true type, that is, which cannot be disposed of as mere cases of 
temptation; one must have attained a considerable capacity 
for sympathy and a considerable knowledge of social rela- 
tions before either the recognition of such problems or 
proper understanding of their significance is possible. Moral 
and economic crises are not vividly presented in sensuous 
imagery excepting in minds of developed intelligence, 
experience, and imaginative power ; and the judgments 
reached in coping with them do not, as a rule, obviously call 
for nicely measured, calculated, and adjusted bodily move- 
ments. The immediate act of executing an important 
economic judgment may be a very commonplace perform- 
ance, like the dictation of a letter, and an ethical decision 
may, however great its importance for future overt conduct, 
be expressed by no immediate visible movements of the 
body. But this possible difference of impressiveness between 
physical and other types of judgments is from our present 
standpoint unessential; and indeed, after all, it cannot be 
denied that there are persons whose sense of moral obliga- 
tion is quite as distinct and influential, and even sensuously 
vivid, as their conviction of the real existence of an external 
world. To the average man it certainly is clear that, as Dr. 
Martineau declares, "it is an inversion of moral truth to say 
.... that honour is higher than appetite because we feel 
it so; we feel it so because it is so. This 'is' we know to 
be not contingent on our apprehension, not to arise from our 



Valuation as a Logical Process 263 

constitution of faculty, but to be a reality irrespective of us 
in adaptation to which our nature is constituted, and for the 
recognition of which the faculty is given." 1 And the 
impressiveness, to most minds, of likening the sublimity of 
the moral law to the visible splendor of the starry heavens 
would seem to suggest that the apprehension of moral truth 
is a mode of consciousness, in form at least, so far akin to 
sense-perception as to be capable of illustration and even 
reinforcement from that type of experience. 

At this point we must revert to a suggestion which pre- 
sented itself above in another connection, but which at the 
time could not be further developed. This was, in a word, that 
there is often a feeling of obtrusiveness in our appreciation 
of the objectivity of the things before us in ordinary sense- 
perception (or physical judgment) which is not unlike the 
felt insistence of remorse and grief. 2 This feeling is so con- 
spicuous a feature of the state of consciousness in physical 
judgment as frequently to serve the plain man as his last 
and irrefragable evidence of the metaphysical independence 
of the material world, and it is indeed a feature whose expla- 
nation does throw much light upon the meaning of the con- 
sciousness of objectivity as a factor within experience. Now, 
there is another common feeling — or, as we do not scruple 
to call it, another emotion — which is perhaps quite as often 
appealed to in this way; though, as we believe, never in 
quite the same connection in any argument in which the 
two experiences are called upon to do service to the same 
end. Material objects, we are told, are reliable and stable 
as distinguished from the fleeting illusive images of a 
dream — they have a "solidity" in virtue of which one 
can " depend upon them," are "hard and fast" remaining 
faithfully where one deposits them for future use or, if they 
change and disappear, doing so in accordance with fixed 

i Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. II, p. 5. 2 See p. 253 above. 



264 Studies in Logical Theory 

laws which make the changes calculable in advance. The 
material realm is the realm of "solid fact" in which one can 
work with assurance that causes will infallibly produce their 
right and proper effects, and to which one willingly returns 
from the dream-world in which his adversary, the "idealist," 
would hold him spellbound. We propose now briefly to 
consider these two modes of apprehension of external physi- 
cal reality in the light of the general analysis of judgment 
given above — from which it will appear that they are, psy- 
chologically, emotional expressions of what have been set 
forth as the essential features of the judgment-situation, 
whether in its physical, ethical, or economic forms. From 
this we shall argue that there should actually be in the ethi- 
cal and economic spheres similar, or essentially identical, 
" emotions of reality," and we shall then proceed to verify 
the hypothesis by pointing to those ethical and economic 
experiences which answer the description. 

We have seen that the center of attention or subject in 
the judgment-process is as such problematic — in the sense 
that there are certain of its observed and recognized attri- 
butes which make it in some sense relevant and useful to the 
purpose in hand, while yet other of its attributes (or absences 
of certain attributes) suggest conflicting activities. The 
object which one sees is certainly a stone and of convenient 
size for hurling at the pursuing animal. The situation has 
been analyzed and found to demand a missile, and this 
demand has led to search for and recognition of a stone. 
The stone, however, may be of a color suggesting a soft and 
crumbling texture, or its form may appear from a distance 
to be such as to make it practically certain to miss the mark, 
however carefully it may be aimed and thrown. Until these 
points of difficulty have been ascertained, the stone is want- 
ing still in certain essential determinations. So far as it has 
been certainly determined, it prompts to the response directly 



Valuation as a Logical Process 265 

suggested by one's general end of defense and escape, but 
there are these other indications which hold this response in 
check and which, if verified, will cause the stone to be let lie 
unused. Now, we have, in this situation of conflict or ten- 
sion between opposed incitements given by the various dis- 
criminated characters of the object, the explanation of the 
aspect of obtrusiveness, of arbitrary resistance to and inde- 
pendence of one's will, which for the time being seems the 
unmistakable mark or coefficient of the thing's objectivity. 
For it is not the object as a whole that is obtrusive ; indeed, 
clearly, there could be no obtrusiveness on the part of an 
"object as a whole," and in such a case there could also be 
no judgment. The obtrusion in the case before us is not a 
sense of the energy of a recalcitrant metaphysical object put 
forth upon a coerced and helpless human will, but simply 
a conscious interpretation of the inhibition of certain of the 
agent's motor tendencies by certain others prompted by the 
object's "suspicious" and as yet undetermined appearances 
or possible attributes. The object as amenable to use — 
those of its qualities which taken by themselves are unques- 
tionable and clearly conducive to the agent's purpose — 
needs no attention for the moment, let us say. The 
attention is rather upon the dubious and to all appearance 
unfavorable qualities, and these for the time being make up 
the sum and content of the agent's knowledge of the object. 
On the other hand, the agent as an active self is identified 
with the end and with those modes of response to the 
object which promise to contribute directly to its realiza- 
tion. It is in this direction that his interest is set and he 
strains with all his powers of mind to move, and it is upon 
the self as identified with, and for the time being expressed 
in, the "effort of the agent's will" that the object as resist- 
ant, refusing to be misconstrued, obtrudes. One must see 
the object and must acknowledge its apparent, or in the end 



266 Studies in Logical Theory 

its ascertained, unfitness. One is "coerced." The situation 
is one of conflict, and it is out of the conflict that the essen- 
tially emotional experience of "resistance" emerges. 1 The 
the more special emotions of impatience, anger, or discour- 
agement may in a given case not be present or may be sup- 
pressed, but the emotion of objectivity will still remain. 2 

On the same general principles the other of our two 
coefficients of reality may be explained. Let us assume that 
the stone in our illustration has at last been cleared of all 
ambiguity in its suggestion, having been taken as a missile, 
and that the man in flight now holds it ready awaiting the 
most favorable moment for hurling it at his pursuer. It 
will hardly be maintained that under these conditions the 
coefficient of the stone's reality as an object consists in its 
obtrusiveness, in its resistance to or coercion of the self. 
The stone is now regarded as a fixed and determinate feature 
of the situation — a condition which can be counted on, 
whatever else may fail. Over against other still uncertain 
aspects of the situation (which are now in their turn real 
because resistant, coercive, and obtrusive) stands the stone 
as a reassuring fact upon and about which the agent can 
build up the whole plan of conduct which may, if all goes 
well, bring him safely out of his predicament. The stone 
has, so to speak, passed over to the " end " side of the situa- 
tion, and although it may have to be rejected for some other 

1 It is not so much the case that the object, on the one side, excites in the agent's 
consciousness, on the other, the " sensations of resistance " which have played such 
a part in recent controversy on the subject, as that (1) the object in certain of its 
promptings is "resisting" certain other of its promptings, or that (2) certain 
"positive" activities of the agent are being inhibited by certain "negative" activi- 
ties, thereby giving rise to the "emotion of resistance." That "positive" and 
"negative " are here used in a teleological way will be apparent. It is surely mis- 
leading to speak of "sensations of resistance " even in deprecatory quotation marks, 
except as "sensation" is used in its everyday meaning, viz., experience of strongly 
sensory quality. 

J The general theory of emotion which is here presupposed, and indeed is funda- 
mental to the entire discussion, may be found in Professor Dewey's papers on 
" The Theory of Emotion," Psychological Review, Vol. I, p. 553; Vol. II, p. 13. 



Valuation as a Logical Process 267 

means of defense, as the definition of the situation proceeds 
and the plan of action accordingly changes (as in some degree 
it probably must), nevertheless for the time being the imaged 
activities as stimulus to which the stone is now accepted are 
a fixed part of the plan and guide in further judgment of 
the means still undefined. The agent can hardly recur to 
the stone, when, after attending for a time to the bewilder- 
ing perplexities of the situation, he pauses once more to take 
an inventory of his certain resources, without something of 
an emotional thrill of assurance and encouragement. In 
this emotional appreciation of the " solidity" and "dependa- 
bility" of the object the second of our coefficients of reality 
consists. This might be termed the Recognition, the other 
the Perception, coefficient. Classifying them as emotions, 
because both are phenomena of tension in activity, we should 
group the Perception coefficient with emotions of the Con- 
traction type, like grief and anger, and the Recognition 
coefficient with the Expansion emotions, like joy and triumph. 
Now, in the foregoing interpretation no reference has 
been made to any conditions peculiar to the physical type of 
judgment-situation. The ground of explanation has been 
the feature of arrest of activity for the sake of reconstruction, 
and this, if our analyses have been correct, is the essence of 
the ethical and economic situations as well as of the physi- 
cal. Can there then be found in these two spheres experi- 
ences of the same nature and emerging under the same 
general conditions as our Perception and Recognition coeffi- 
cients of reality? If so, then our case for the objective 
significance and value of ethical and economic judgment is 
in so far strengthened. (1) In the first place, then, the 
object in its economic character is problematic, assuming 
a desire on the agent's part to apply it, as means, to some 
new or freshly interesting end, because it has already been, 
and accordingly now is, set apart for other uses and cannot 



268 Studies in Logical Theory 

thoughtlessly be withdrawn from them. Extended illustra- 
tion is not needed to remind one that these established and 
hitherto unquestioned uses will haunt the economic con- 
science as obtrusively and inhibit the desired course of eco- 
nomic conduct with as much energy of resistance as in the 
other case will any of the contrary promptings of a physical 
object. Moreover, the Recognition coefficient may as easily 
be identified in this connection. If one's scruples gain the 
day, in such a case one has at least a sense of comforting 
assurance in the conservatism of his choice and its accord- 
ance with the facts, however unreconciled in another way 
one may be to the deprivation that has thus seemed to be 
necessary. If, however, the new end in a measure makes 
good its case and the modes of expenditure which the " scru- 
ples" represented have been readjusted in accordance with it, 
then the means, no less than before the new interpretation had 
been placed upon them, will enjoy the status of Reality in 
the economic sense. They will be real now, however, not in 
the obtrusive way, as presenting aspects which inhibit the 
leading tendency in the judgment-process, but, instead, as 
means having a fixed and certain character in one's economic 
life, which, after the hesitation and doubt just now super- 
seded, one may safely count upon and will do well to keep 
in view henceforth. (2) In the second place, mere mention 
of the corresponding ethical experiences must suffice, since 
only extended illustration from literature and life would be 
fully adequate: on the one hand, the "still small voice" of 
Conscience or the authoritativeness of Duty, "stern daugh- 
ter of the voice of God;" and, on the other, the restful 
assurance with which, from the vantage-ground of a satisfy- 
ing decision, one may look back in wonder at the possibility 
of so serious a temptation or in rejoicing over the new-won 
freedom from a burdensome and repressive prejudice. 

This must for the present serve as positive exposition of 



Valuation as a Logical Process 269 

our view as to the objective significance of the valuational 

types of judgment. There are certain essential points which 

have as yet not been touched upon, and there are certain 

objections to the general view the consideration of which 

will serve further to explain it ; but the discussion of these 

various matters will more conveniently follow the special 

analysis of the valuational judgments, to which we shall now 

proceed. 

IV 

In the last analysis the ultimate motive of all reflective 
thought is the progressive determination of the ends of 
conduct. Physical judgment, or, in psychological terms, 
reflective attention to objects in the physical world, is at 
every turn directed and controlled by reference to a gradu- 
ally developing purpose, so that the process may also be 
described as one of bringing to fulness of definition an at 
first vaguely conceived purpose through ascertainment and 
determination of the means at hand. The problematic situa- 
tion in which reflection takes its rise inevitably develops in 
this two-sided way into consciousness of a definite end 
on the one side, and of the means or conditions of attaining 
it on the other. 

It has been shown that there may be involved in any 
finally satisfactory determination of a situation an explicit 
reflection upon and definition of the controlling end which 
is present and gives point and direction to the physical 
determination. But very often such is not the case. When 
a child sees a bright object at a distance and makes toward 
it, availing himself more or less skilfully of such assistance 
as intervening articles of furniture may afford, there is of 
course no consciousness on his part of any definite purpose 
as such, and this is to say that the child does not subject his 
conduct to criticism from the standpoint of the value of its 
ends. There is simply strong desire for the distant red ball, 



270 Studies in Logical Theory 

controlling all the child's movements for the time being and 
prompting a more or less critical inspection of the interven- 
ing territory with reference to the easiest way of crossing 
it. The purpose is implicitly accepted, not explicitly de- 
termined, as a preliminary to physical determination of the 
situation. If one may speak of a development of the pur- 
pose in such a case as this, one must say that the develop- 
ment into details comes through judgment of the environing 
conditions. To change the illustration in order not to 
commit ourselves to the ascription of too developed a 
faculty of judgment to the child, this is true likewise of 
any process of reflective attention in the mind of an adult in 
which a general purpose is accepted at the outset and is car- 
ried through to execution without reflection upon its ethical 
or economic character as a purpose. The specific purpose 
as executed is certainly not the same as the general purpose 
with which the reflective process took its rise. It is filled 
out with details, or may perhaps even be quite different in 
its general outlines. There has necessarily been develop- 
ment and perhaps even transformation, but our contention is 
that all this has been effected in and through a process of 
judgment in which the conditions of action, and not the 
purpose itself, have been the immediate objects of determi- 
nation. Upon these the attention has been centered, though 
of course the attention was directed to them by the purpose. 
To state the case in logical terms, it has been only through 
selection and determination of the means and conditions of 
action from the standpoint of predicates suggested by the 
general purpose accepted at the outset that this purpose 
itself had been rendered definite and practical and possible 
of execution. Probably such cases are seldom to be found in 
the adult experience. As a rule, the course of physical or 
technological judgment will almost always bring to light 
implications involved in the accepted purpose which must 



Valuation as a Logical Process 271 

inevitably raise ethical and economic questions; and the 
resolution of these latter will in turn afford new points of 
view for further physical determination of the situation. In 
such processes the logical points of the problem of ethical 
and economic valuation come clearly into view. 

In our earlier account of the matter it was more con- 
venient to use language which implied that ethical and 
economic judgment must be preceded by implicit or explicit 
acceptance of a definite situation presented in sense- 
perception, and that these evaluating judgments could be 
carried through to their goal only upon the basis of such an 
inventory of fixed conditions. Thus the ultimate ethical 
quality of the general purpose of building a house would 
seem to depend upon the precise form which this purpose 
comes to assume after the actual presence and the quality of 
the means of building have been ascertained and the eco- 
nomic bearings of the proposed expenditure have been 
considered. Surely it is a waste of effort to debate with 
oneself upon the ethical Tightness of a project which is physi- 
cally impossible or else out of the question from the economic 
point of view. We are, however, now in a position to see 
that this way of looking at the matter is both inaccurate and 
self -contradictory. In the actual development of our pur- 
poses there is no such orderly and inflexible arrangement of 
stages; and if it is a waste of effort to deliberate upon a 
purpose that is physically impossible, it may, with still 
greater force, be argued that we cannot find, and judge the 
fitness of, the necessary physical means until we know what, 
precisely, it is that we wish to do. The truth is that there is 
constant interplay and interaction between the various phases 
of the inclusive judgment-process, or rather, more than this, 
that there is a complete and thoroughgoing mutual implica- 
tion. It is indeed true that our ethical purposes cannot take 
form in a vacuum apart from consideration of their physical 



272 Studies in Logical Theoky 

and economic possibility, but it is also true that our physical 
and economic problems are ultimately meaningless and 
impossible, whether of statement or of solution, except as 
they are interpreted as arising in the course of ethical 
conflict. 

We have, then, to do, in the present division, with situa- 
tions in which, whether at the outset or from time to time 
during the course of the reflective process, there is explicit 
conflict between ends of conduct. These situations are the 
special province of the judgment of valuation. Our line of 
argument may be briefly indicated in advance as follows: 

1. The judgment of valuation, whether expressed in terms 
of the individual experience or in terms of social evolution, is 
essentially the process of the explicit and deliberate resolu- 
tion of conflict between ends. As an incidental, though 
nearly always indispensable, step to the final resolution of 
such conflict, physical judgment, or, in general, the judgment 
of fact or existence, plays its part, this part being to define 
the situation in terms of the means necessary for the execu- 
tion of the end that is gradually taking form. The two 
modes of judgment mutually incite and control each other, 
and neither could continue to any useful purpose without 
this incitement and control of the other. Both modes of 
judgment are objective in content and significance. At the 
end of the reflective process and immediately upon the verge 
of execution of the end or purpose which has taken form the 
result may be stated or apprehended in either of two ways : 
(1) directly, in terms of the end, and (2) indirectly, in terms 
of the ordered system of existent means which have been dis- 
covered, determined, and arranged. If such final survey of 
the result be taken by way of preparation for action, or for 
whatever reason, the end will be apprehended as possessing 
ethical value and the means, under conditions later to be 
specified, as possessing economic value. 



Valuation as a Logical Process 273 

2. What then is the nature and source of this apprehen- 
sion of end or means as valuable ? The consciousness of end 
or means as valuable is an emotional consciousness expressive 
of the agent's practical attitude as determined in the just 
completed judgment of ethical or economic valuation and 
arising in consequence of the inhibition placed upon the 
activities which constitute the attitude by the effort of 
apprehending or imaging the valued object. Ethical and 
economic value are thus strictly correlative ; psychologically 
they are emotional incidents of apprehending in the two 
respective ways just indicated the same total result of the 
inclusive complex judgment- process. Finally, as the mo- 
ment of action comes on, the consciousness of the ethically 
valued end lapses first; then the consciousness of economic 
value is lost in a purely "physical," i. e., technological, con- 
sciousness of the means and their properties and interrela- 
tions in the ordered system which has been arranged; and 
this finally merges into the immediate and undifferentiated 
consciousness of activity as use of the means becomes sure 
and unhesitating. 

When we say that the ends which oppose each other in an 
ethical situation (that is, a situation for the time being seen in 
an ethical aspect) are related, and the ends in an economic 
situation are not, we by no means wish to imply that in the one 
case we have in this fact of relatedness a satisfactory solution 
at hand which is wanting in the other. To feel, for example, 
that there is a direct and inherent relationship between a 
cherished purpose of self-culture and an ideal of social service 
which seems now to require the abandonment of the purpose 
does not mean that one yet knows just hoiv the two ends should 
be related in his life henceforth; and again, to say that one 
can see no inherent relation between a desire for books and 
pictures and the need of food, excepting in so far as both ends 
depend for their realization upon a limited supply of means, 



274 Studies in Logical Theory 

is not to say that the issue of the conflict is not of ethical 
significance. Such a view as we here reject would amount to 
a denial of the possibility of genuinely problematic ethical 
situations 1 and would accord with the opinion that economic 
judgment as such lies apart from the sphere of ethics and is 
at most subject only to occasional revision and control in the 
light of ethical considerations. 

By the relatedness of the ends in a situation we mean the 
fact, more or less explicitly recognized by the agent, that the 
new, and as yet undefined, purpose which has arisen belongs 
in the same system with the end, or group of ends, which 
the standard inhibiting immediate action represents. The 
standard inhibits action in obedience to the impulse that has 
come to consciousness, and the image of the new end is, on 
its part, definite and impressive enough to inhibit action in 
obedience to the standard. The relatedness of the two 
factors is shown in a practical way by the fact that, in the 
first instance at least, they are tacitly expected to work out 
their own adjustment. By the process already described in 
outline, subject and predicate begin to develop and thereby 
to approach each other, and a provisional or partial solution 
of the problem may thus be reached without resort to any 
other method than that of direct comparison and adjustment 
of the ends involved on either side. The standard which 
has been called in question has enough of congruence with 
the new imaged purpose to admit of at least some progress 
toward a solution through this method. 

We can best come to an understanding of this recogni- 
tion of the relatedness of the ends in ethical valuation by 
pausing to examine somewhat carefully into the conditions 
involved in the acceptance or reflective acknowledgment of 
a defined end of conduct as being one's own. Any new end 

1 Such is, in fact, the teaching of the various forms of ethical intuitionism, 
and we find it not merely implied, but explicitly affirmed, in a work in many respects 
so remote from intuitionism in its standpoint as Green's Prolegomena to Ethics. 
See pp. 178-81, and especially pp. 355-9. 



Valuation as a Logical Process 275 

in coming to consciousness encounters some more or less 
firmly established habit represented in consciousness by a 
sign or symbolic image of some sort, the habit being itself 
the outcome of past judgment-process. Our present problem 
is the significance of the agent's recognition of a relatedness 
between his new impulsive end and the end which represents 
the habit, and we shall best approach its solution by consider- 
ing the various factors and conditions involved in the agent's 
conscious recognition of the established end as being such. 

In any determinate end there is inevitably implied a 
number of groups of factual judgments in which are pre- 
sented the objective conditions under which execution of the 
end or purpose must take place. There is in the first place 
a general view of environing conditions, physical and social, 
presented in a group of judgments (1) descriptive of the 
means at hand, of the topography of the region in which the 
purpose is to be carried out, of climatic conditions, and the 
like, and (2) descriptive of the habits of thought and feeling 
of the people with whom one is to deal, their prejudices, 
their tastes, and their institutions. The project decided on 
may, let us say, be an individual or a national enterprise, 
whether philanthropic or commercial, which is to be launched 
in a distant country peopled by partly civilized races. In 
addition to these groups of judgments upon the physical and 
sociological conditions under which the work must proceed, 
there will also be a more or less adequate and impartial 
knowledge of one's own physical and mental fitness for the 
enterprise, since the work as projected may promise to tax 
one's physical powers severely and to require, for its suc- 
cessful conduct, large measure of industry, devotion, patience, 
and wisdom. Indeed any determinate purpose whatever 
inevitably implies a more or less varied and comprehensive 
inventory of conditions. Further illustration is not neces- 
sary for our present purpose. We may say that in a general 



276 Studies in Logical Theoky 

way the conditions relevant to a practical purpose will group 
themselves naturally under four heads of classification, as 
physical, sociological, physiological, and psychological. All 
four classes are objective, though the last two embrace con- 
ditions peculiar to the agent as an individual over against 
the environment to which for purposes of his present activity 
he stands in a sense opposed. 

Now our present interest is not so much in the enumera- 
tion and classification of possible relevant conditions in a typi- 
cal situation as in the significance of these relevant conditions 
in the agent's apprehension of them. Perhaps this signifi- 
cance cannot better be described than by saying that essen- 
tially and impressively the conditions are apprehended as, 
taken together, warranting the purpose that has been de- 
termined. We appeal, in support of this account of the 
matter, to an impartial introspection of the way in which 
the means and conditions of action stand related to the 
formed purpose in the moment of survey of a situation. The 
various details presented in the survey of a situation are 
apprehended, not as bare ' facts such as one might find set 
down in a scientist's notebook, but as warranting — as closely, 
uniquely, and vitally relevant to — the action that is about to 
be taken. This, as we believe, is a fair account of the situa- 
tion in even the commoner and simpler emergencies that 
confront the ordinary man. Quite conspicuously is it true 
of cases in which the purpose is a purely technological one 
that has been worked out with considerable difficulty and is 
therefore not executed until after a somewhat careful survey 
of conditions has been taken. It is often true likewise in 
cases of express ethical judgment; if the ethical phases of 
the reflective process have not been excessively long and 
difficult, our definite sense of the ethical value of the act we 
are about to do lapses quite easily, and the factual aspects 
and features of the situation as given in one or more of the 



Valuation as a Logical Process 277 

four classes which we have distinguished take on an access 
of significance in their character of warranting, confirming, 
or even compelling the act determined upon. Of our ordi- 
nary sense-perception in the moments of its actual function- 
ing no less than of conscience in its aspect of a moral 
perceptive faculty are the words of Bishop Butler sensibly 
true that "to preside and govern, from the very economy 
and constitution of man, belongs to it." 1 Even in cases of 
more serious moral difficulty this sanctioning aspect of the 
means and conditions of action is not overshadowed. If the 
situation is one in which by reason of their complexity these 
play a conspicuous role and must be surveyed, by way of 
preparation on the agents' part, for performance of the act, 
they inevitably assume, for the agent, their proper functional 
character. In general, the conditions presented in the 
system of factual judgments have a certain "rightful author- 
ity" which they seem to lend to the purpose or end with 
reference to which they were worked out to their present 
degree of factual detail. The conditions can thus seem to 
sanction the end because conditions and end have been 
worked out together. Gradual development on the one side 
prompts analytical inquiry upon the other and is in turn 
directed and advanced by the results of this inquiry. In 
the end the result may be read off either in terms of end or in 
terms of conditions and means. 2 The two readings must be 
in accord and the agent's apprehension of the conditions as 
warrant for the end is expression in consciousness of this 
"agreement." 3 

Now in this mode of apprehension of factual conditions 
there is a highly important logical implication — an implica- 

1 Sermon II. 

2 Not to imply of course that psychologically or logically the distinction of con- 
ditions and means is other than a convenient superficial one. 

3 Manifestly we have here been approaching from a new direction the "Recog- 
nition coefficient " of reality described above. See p. 266. 



278 Studies in Logical Theoey 

tion which inevitably comes more and more clearly into view 
with the continued exercise of judgment, even though the 
agent's habit of interest in the scrutiny of perplexing situ- 
ations may still remain, by reason of the want of trained 
capacity for a broader view, limited in its range quite strictly 
to the physical sphere. This implication is, we shall declare 
at once, that of an endeavoring, striving, active principle or 
self which can be helped or hindered in its unfolding by 
particular purposes and sets of corresponding conditions — 
can lose or gain, through devotion to particular purposes, in 
the breadth, fulness, and energy of its life. The agent's 
apprehension of and reference to this active principle of 
course varies in all degrees of explicitness, according to cir- 
cumstances, from the vague awareness that is present in a 
simple case of physical judgment to the clear recognition and 
endeavor at definition that are characteristic of serious 
ethical crises. 

That the situation should develop and bring to light this 
factor is what should be expected on general grounds of 
logic — for to say that a set of conditions warrants or sanctions 
or confirms a given purpose implies that our purposes can 
stand in need of warrant, and this would seem to be impos- 
sible apart from reference to a process whose maintenance and 
development in and through our purposes are assumed as being 
as a matter of course desirable. It is of the essence of our con- 
tention that the apprehension of the conditions of action as 
warranting the end is a primordial and necessary feature of 
the situation — indeed, its constitutive feature. If our concern 
were with the psychological development of self -consciousness 
as a phase of reflective experience, we should endeavor to show 
that this development is mediated in the first instance by the 
"subjective" phenomena of feeling, emotion, and desire 
which find their place in the course of the judgment-process. 
We should then hold that, with the conclusion of the judg- 



Valuation as a Logical Process 279 

ment-process and the accompanying sense of the known 
conditions as reassuring and confirmatory of the end, comes 
the earliest possibility of a discriminative recognition of the 
self as having been all along a necessary factor in the 
process. We should hold that outside of the process of re- 
flective attention there can be no psychical or "elementary" 
beginnings of self-consciousness, and then that, except as 
a development out of the experience to which we have re- 
ferred as marking the conclusion of the attentive process, 
there can be no recognized specific and in any degree defin- 
able consciousness of self. All this, however, lies rather 
beside our present purpose. We wish simply to insist that 
it is out of the apprehension of conditions as reassuring and 
confirmatory, out of this "primordial germ," that the agent's 
definite recognition of himself as a center of development 
and expenditure of energy takes its rise. Here are the 
beginnings of the possibility of self-conscious ethical and 
economic valuation. 

This apprehension of the means as warranting is, we have 
held, a fact even when the means surveyed are wholly of the 
physical sort, and we have thereby implied that consciousness 
of the self as "energetic" may take its rise in situations of 
this type or during the physical stage in the development of 
a more complex total situation. It would be an interesting 
speculation to consider to what extent and in what way the 
development of the sciences of sociology and physiology may 
have been essentially facilitated by the emergence of this 
form of self -consciousness. But however the case may stand 
with these sciences or with the rise of real interest in them 
in the mind of a given individual, interest in the objective 
psychological conditions of a contemplated act is certainly 
very closely dependent upon interest in that subjective self 
which one has learned to know through the past exercise of 
judgment in definition and contemplation of conditions of 



280 Studies in Logical Theory 

the three other kinds. The more diversified and complex 
the array of physical and social conditions with reference to 
which one is to act, the more important becomes not simply 
a clearly articulated knowledge of these, but also a knowledge 
of oneself. The self that is warranted in its purpose by the 
surveyed conditions must hold itself in a steady and consistent 
attitude during the performance on pain of "falling short of 
its opportunity" and thereby rendering nugatory the reflect- 
ive process in which the purpose was worked out. Experi- 
ence abundantly shows how easily the assurance that comes 
with the survey of conditions may come to grief, though 
there may have been on the side of the conditions, so far as 
defined, no visible change ; and in so far as self- consciousness 
has already emerged as a distinguishable factor in such 
situations, failures of the sort we here refer to are the more 
easily identified and interpreted. Some sudden impulse may 
have broken in upon the execution of the chosen purpose ; 
there may have been an unexpected shift of interest away 
from that general phase of life which the purpose repre- 
sented ; or in any one of a number of other ways may have 
come about a wavering and a slackening in the resolution 
which marked the commencement of action. The "energetic" 
self forthwith (if we may so express it) recognizes that the 
sanction which the conditions so far as then known gave to 
its purpose was a misleading because an incomplete one, and 
it proceeds to develop within itself a new range of objective 
fact in which may be worked out the explanation, and thereby 
a method of control, of these new disturbing phenomena. 
The qualities of patience under disappointment, courage in 
encountering resistance, steadiness and self-control in sus- 
tained and difficult effort — these qualities and others of like 
nature come to be discriminated from each other by intro- 
spective analysis and may be as accurately measured, and in 
general as objectively studied, as any of the conditions to a 



Valuation as a Logical Process 281 

saving knowledge and respect of which one may already 
have attained, and these newly determined psychological 
conditions will henceforth play the same part in affording 
sanction to one's purposes as do the rest. An ordered system 
of psychological categories or points of view comes to be 
developed, and an accurate statement of conditions of per- 
sonal disposition and capacity relevant to each emergency as 
it arises will hereafter be worked out — over against and in 
tension with one's gradually forming purposes in like manner 
as are statements of all the other relevant objective aspects 
of the situation. 1 

In the "energetic" self, we shall now seek to show, we 
have the common and essential principle of both ethical and 
economic valuation which marks these off from other and sub- 
ordinate types of judgment. Let us determine as definitely 
as possible the nature and function of this principle. 

The recognition of the chosen purpose as one favorable 
or otherwise to the self, and so the recognition of the self as 
capable of furtherance or retardation by its chosen purposes, 
is not always a feature of the state of mind which may ensue 
upon completed judgment. In the commoner situations of 
the everyday life of normal persons, as practically always in 
the lives of persons of relatively undeveloped reflective powers, 
it is quite wanting as a separate distinguished phase of the 
experience. In such cases it is present, if present at all, 
merely as the vaguely felt implicit meaning of the recogni- 
tion that the known conditions sanction and confirm the 

1 This, if it were intended as an account of the genesis of psychology as a science 
and of the psychological interest on the part of the individual, would doubtless be 
most inadequate. We have, for one thing, made no mention of the part which error 
and resulting practical failure play in stimulating an interest in the judgmental 
processes of observation and the like, and in technique of the control of these. Here, 
as well as in the processes of execution of our purposes, must be found many of the 
roots of psychology as a science. Moreover, no explanation has been offered above 
for the appropriation by the "■energetic" self of these phenomena of interruption 
and retardation of its energy as being, in fact, its own, or within itself. The problem 
would appear to be psychological, and so without our province, and we gladly pass 
it by. 



282 Studies in Logical Theory 

purpose. Such situations yield easily to attack and threaten 
none of those dangers, none of those possible occasions for 
regret or remorse, of which complex situations make the per- 
son of developed reflective capacity and long experience so 
keenly apprehensive. They are disposed of with compara- 
tively little of conscious reconstruction on either the subject or 
the predicate side, and when a conclusion has been reached 
the agent's recognition of the conditions carries with it the 
comfortable though too often delusive assurance of the com- 
plete and perfect eligibility of the purpose. If the question of 
eligibility is raised at all, the answer is given on the tacit prin- 
ciple that " whatever purpose is, is right." To the "plain 
man," and to all of us on certain sides of our lives, every pur- 
pose for which the requisite means and factual conditions are 
found to be at hand is, just as our purpose, therefore right. 
The same experience of failure and disappointment which 
proves our purpose to have been, from the standpoint of 
enlargement and enrichment of the self, a mistaken one 
brings a clearer consciousness of the logic implicit in our 
first confident belief in the purpose, and at the same time 
emphasizes the need of making this logic explicit. The pur- 
pose, as warranted to us by the conditions and assembled 
means that lay before us, was our own, and as our own was 
implicitly a purpose of furtherance of the self. The disap- 
pointment that has come brings this implication more clearly 
into view, and likewise the need of methodical procedure, 
not as before in the determination of conditions, but in the 
determination of purposes as such; for the essence of the 
situation is that the execution of the purpose has brought to 
light some unforeseen consequence now recognized as having 
been all the while in the nature of things involved in the 
purpose. This consequence or group of consequences con- 
sists (in general terms) in the abatement or arrest of desir- 
able modes of activity which find their motivation elsewhere 



Valuation as a Logical Process 283 

in the agent's system of accepted ends, and it is registered 
in consciousness in that sense of restriction or repression 
from without which is a notable phase of all emotional experi- 
ence, particularly in its early stages. The consequences are 
as undesirable as they are unexpected, and the reaction against 
them, at first emotional, presently passes over into the form 
of a reflective interpretation of the situation to the effect that 
the self has suffered a loss by reason of its thoughtless haste 
in identifying itself with so unsafe a purpose. 1 

It is the essential logical function of the consciousness of 
self to stimulate the valuation processes which take their rise 
in the stage of reflective thought thus attained. The con- 
sciousness of self is a peculiarly baffling theme for discussion 
from whatever point of view, because one finds its meaning 
shifting constantly between the two extremes of a subjec- 
tivity to which "all objects of all thought" are external and 
an objective thing or system of energies which is known just 
as other things are — known in a sense by itself, to be sure, 
but known nevertheless, and thought of as an object standing 
in possible relations to other objects. Now, it is of the 
subjective self that we are speaking when we say that its 
essential function is the stimulation or incitement of the 
valuation processes, but manifestly in order to serve thus it 
must nevertheless be presented in some sort of sensuous 
imagery. The subjective self may, in fact, be thought of in 
many ways — presented in many different sorts of imagery — 
but in all its forms it must be distinguished carefully from 

i We can, of course, undertake no minute analysis of the psychological mechan- 
ism or concatenation of the process here sketched in barest outline. Our present 
purpose is wholly that of description. Slight as our account of the process of transi- 
tion is, we give it space only because it seems necessary to do so in order to make 
intelligible the accounts yet to be given of the conscious valuation processes for 
which the movement here described prepares the way. 

It will be observed that we assume above that the purpose is successful as 
planned and by succeeding brings about the undesirable results. Failure in execu. 
tion of the purpose as such could only, in the manner already outlined, prompt a 
more adequate investigation of the factual conditions. 



284 Studies in Logical Theory 

that objective self which, as described in psychology, is the 
assemblage of conditions under which the subjective or 
"energetic" self works out its purposes. It may be the 
pale, attenuated double of the body, or a personal being 
standing in need of deliverance from sin, or an atom of 
soul-substance, or, in our present terminology, a center of 
developing and unfolding energy. The significant fact is 
that, however different in content and in motive these various 
presentations of the subjective self may be, they are, one and 
all, as presentations and as in so far objective, stimuli to 
some definite response. The savage warrior deposits his 
double in a tree or stone for safety while he goes into battle ; 
the self that is to be saved from sin is a self that prompts 
certain acceptable acts in satisfaction of the quasi-legal obli- 
gations that the fact of sin has laid upon the agent. The 
presented self, whatever the form it may assume as presen- 
tation, has its function, and this function is in general that 
of stimulus to the conservation and increase, in some sense, 
of the self that is not presented, but for whom the presen- 
tation is. Now our own present description of the self as 
"energetic," as a center or source of developing and unfold- 
ing energy is in its way a presentation. It consists of 
sensuous imagery and suggests a mechanical process, or the 
growth of a plant perhaps, which if properly safeguarded 
will go on satisfactorily — a process which one must not 
allow to be perturbed or hindered by external resistance or 
internal friction or to run down. To many persons doubt- 
less such an account would seem arbitrary and fantastic in 
the extreme, but no great importance need be attached to 
its details. The kind and number and sensuous vividness 
of the details in which this essential content of presentation 
may be clothed must of course depend, for each person, upon 
his psychical idiosyncrasy. 

Indeed, as the habit of reflection upon purposes comes 



Valuation as a Logical Process 285 

to be more firmly fixed, and the procedure of valuation to be 
consciously methodical and orderly, the sensuous content of 
the presented self must grow constantly more and more 
attenuated until it has declined into a mere unexpressed 
principle or maxim or tacit presumption, prescribing the free 
and impartial application of the method of valuation to 
particular practical emergencies as these arise. For a self, 
consisting of presented content of whatever sort, which one 
seeks to further through attentive deliberation upon con- 
crete purposes, must, just in so far as it has content, deter- 
mine the outcome of ethical judgment in definite ways. 
Thus the soul that must be saved from sin (if this be the 
content of the presented self) is one that has transgressed 
the law in certain ways and the right relations that should 
subsist between creature and Creator, and has thereby 
incurred a more or less technically definable guilt. This 
guilt can only be removed and the self rehabilitated in its 
normal relations to the law by an appropriate response to the 
situation — by a choice on the agent's part, first, of a certain 
technical procedure of repentance, and then of a settled 
purpose of living as the law prescribes. 1 So also our own 
image of the self as "energetic" after the manner of a 
growing organism may well seem, if taken too seriously as 
to its presentational details, to foster a bias in favor of over- 
conservative adherence to the established and the accredited 
as such. 2 

The argument of the last few paragraphs may be restated 

* The case is not essentially altered in logical character if for the Levitical law 
be substituted the general principles of the new dispensation read off into details 
by an authoritative church or by " private judgment." 

2 A remark may be added here by way of caution. The presented self, we have 
said, attenuates to a mere maxim or tacit presumption in favor of a certain type of 
logical procedure in dealing with the situation. It must be remembered that the 
presented self, like all other presentation, is and comes to be for the sake of its 
function in experience, and so is practical from the start. The process sketched 
above is therefore not from bare presented content as such to a methodological 
presumption, which, as methodological and not contentual, is qualitatively dif- 
ferent from what preceded it. 



286 Studies in Logical Theory 

in the following way in terms of the evolution of the indi- 
vidual's moral attitude or technique of self-control: 

1. In the stage of moral evolution in which custom and 
authority are the controlling principles of conduct, moral 
judgment in the proper sense of self-conscious, critical, and 
reconstructive valuation of purposes is wanting. Such judg- 
ment as finds here a place is at best of the merely casuistical 
type, looking to a determination of particular cases as falling 
within the scope of fixed and definite concepts. There is no 
self-consciousness except such as may be mediated by the 
sentiment of willing obedience. It is, at this stage, not the 
particular sort of conduct which the law prescribes that in 
the agent's apprehension enlarges and develops the self; so 
far as any thought of enlargement and development of the 
self plays a part in influencing conduct, these effects are such 
as, in the agent's trusting faith, will come from an entire and 
willing acceptance of the law as such. "If any man will do 
His will, he shall know of the doctrine." Moreover, the stage 
of custom and authority goes along with, in social evolution, 
either very simple social conditions or else conditions which, 
though very complex, are stable, so that in either case the 
conditions of conduct are in general in harmony with the 
conduct which custom and authority prescribe. The law, 
therefore, can be absolute and takes no account of possible 
inability to obey. The divine justice punishes infraction of 
the law simply as objective infraction ; not as sin, in propor- 
tion to the sinner's responsibility. 

2. But inevitably custom and authority come to be inade- 
quate. As social conditions change, custom becomes anti- 
quated and authority blunders, wavers, contradicts itself in 
the endeavor to prescribe suitable modes of individual con- 
duct. Obedience no longer is the way to light. The self 
becomes self-conscious through feeling more and more the 
repression and the misdirection of its energies that obedi- 



Valuation as a Logical Process 287 

ence now involves. This is the stage of subjective morality 
or conscience; and the rise of conscience, the attitude of 
appeal to conscience, means the beginning of endeavor at 
methodical solution of those new problematic situations in the 
attempt to deal with which authority as such has palpably 
collapsed. We say, however, that conscience is the begin- 
ning of this endeavor; for conscience is, in fact, an ambigu- 
ous and essentially transitional phenomenon. On the one 
hand conscience is the inner nature of a man speaking 
within him, and so the self furthers its own growth in listen- 
ing to this expression of itself. In this aspect conscience is 
methodological. But on the other hand conscience speaks, 
and, speaking, must say something determinate, however 
general this something may be. In this aspect conscience is 
a r&sum6 of the generic values realized under the system of 
custom and authority, but to the present continued attainment 
of which the particular prescriptions of custom and author- 
ity are no longer adequate guides. Conscience is thus at 
once an inward prompting to the application of logical 
method to the case in hand and a body of general or specific 
rules under some one of which the case can be subsumed. 
In ethical theory we accordingly find no unanimity as to the 
nature of conscience. At the one extreme it is the voice of 
God speaking in us or through us, in detailed and specific 
terms — and so, virtually, custom and authority in disguise. 
At the other it is an empty abstract intuition that the right 
is binding upon us — and, so, simply the hypostasis of 
demand for a logical procedure. The history of ethics 
presents us with all possible intermediate conceptions in 
which these extreme motives are more or less skilfully inter- 
woven or combined in varying proportions. The truth is 
that conscience is essentially a transitional conception, and 
so necessarily looks before and after. In one of its aspects 
it is a self which has come to miss (and therefore to image 



288 Studies in Logical Theory 

for itself) the values and, it may be, a certain dawning sense 
of vitality and growth which obedience to authority once 
afforded. 1 In its other aspect it is a self that is looking for- 
ward in a self-reliant way to the determination on its own 
account of its purposes and values. And finally, as for the 
environing world of means and conditions, clearly this is not 
necessarily harmonious with and amenable to conscience; 
indeed, in the nature of things it can be only partially so. 
The morality of conscience is, therefore, either mystical, a 
morality that seeks to escape the world in the very moment 
of its affirmation that the world is unreal (because worthless), 
or else it takes refuge in a virtual distinction between "abso- 
lute" and "relative" morality (to borrow a terminology from 
a system in which properly it should have no place), perhaps 
setting up as an intermediary between heaven and earth a 
machinery of special dispensation. 2 

3. Conscience professes in general, that is, to be autono- 
mous, and the profession is, strictly speaking, a contradiction 
in terms. Moreover, apart from considerations of the logic 
of the situation, theories of conscience have, as a matter of 
fact, always lent themselves kindly to theological purposes 
just as the theory of self-realization in its classic modern 
statement rests upon a metaphysical doctrine of the Abso- 
lute. 3 Inevitably the movement concealed within this essen- 
tially unstable conception must have its legitimate outcome 
(1) in a clearing of the presented self of its fixed elements 
of content, thus setting it free in its character of a non- 
presentational principle of valuation, and (2) a setting apart 
of these elements of content from the principle of valuation 

i Recognized authority is, of course, not the same thing by any means as 
authority unrecognized because absolutely dominant. 

2 We may be pardoned for supplying from the history of ethics no illustrations 
of this slight sketch. 

3 In fact, as suggested above, the Prolegomena to Ethics is in many respects 
essentially intuitional in spirit, though its intuitionism is of a modern discreetly 
attenuated sort. 



Valuation as a Logical Process 289 

as standards for reference and consultation rather than as 
law to be obeyed. 

We have thus correlated our account of the logic whereby 
the "energetic" self comes to explicit recognition as stimu- 
lus to the valuation-process with the three main stages in the 
moral evolution of the individual and the race. We were 
brought to this first-mentioned part of our discussion by our 
endeavor to find out the factors involved in the first accept- 
ance of a conscious purpose (or, indifferently, the subsequent 
recognition of it as a standard) — an endeavor prompted by 
the need of distinguishing, with a view to their special 
analysis, the two types of valuation -process. We now return 
to this problem. 

The following illustration will serve our present undertak- 
ing: A lawyer or man of business is struck by the great 
need of honest men in public office, or has had his attention 
in some impressive way called to the fact of great inequality 
in the present distribution of wealth, and to the diverse evils 
resulting therefrom. These facts hold his attention, perhaps 
against his will, and at last suggest the thought of his mak- 
ing some personal endeavor toward improvement of condi- 
tions, political or social, as the case may be. On the other 
hand, however, the man has before him the promise of a 
successful or even brilliant career in his chosen occupation, 
and is already in the enjoyment of a substantial income, which 
is rapidly increasing. Moreover, he has a family growing 
up about him, and he is not simply strongly interested in the 
early training and development of his children, and desirous 
of having himself some share in conducting it, but he sees 
that the suitable higher education of his children will in a 
few years make heavy demands upon his pecuniary means. 
Here, then, we have a situation the analysis of which will 
enable us to distinguish and define the provinces of ethical 
and economic judgment. 



290 Studies in Logical Theory 

It is easy to see that we have here a conflict between 
ends. On the one side is the thought of public service in 
some important office or, let us say, the thought of bettering 
society in a more fundamental way by joining the propa- 
ganda of some proposed social reform. This end rests upon 
certain social impulses in the man's nature and appeals to 
him as strongly, we may fairly assume, as would any pur- 
pose of immediate self-interest or self-indulgence, so that it 
stands before him and urges him with an insistent pertinacity 
that at first even puts him on his guard against it as a 
temptation. Over against this concrete end or subject of 
moral valuation stand other ends comprehended or symbol- 
ized in the ideals of regular and steady industry, of material 
provision for family, of paternal duty toward children, of 
scholarly achievement as lawyer or judge, and the like — 
ideals which are indeed practical and personal, but which, as 
they now function, are general or universal in character, 
are lacking in the concreteness and emotional quality which 
belong to the new purpose which has just come to imagina- 
tion and has brought these ideals into action on the predicate 
side. Will this life of social agitation really be quite 
"respectable," and befitting the character of a sober and 
industrious man ? Will it enable me to support and educate 
my family ? Will it permit me to devote sufficient attention 
to their present care and training ? And will it not so warp 
my nature, so narrow and concentrate my interests, as in a 
measure to disqualify me for the right exercise of paternal 
authority over them in years to come ? Moreover, will not a 
life of agitation, of constant intercourse with minds and 
natures in many ways inferior to my own and those of my 
present professional associates, lower my intellectual and 
moral standards, and so make of me in the end a less useful 
member of society than I am at present ? These and other 
questions like them present the issue in its earlier aspect. 



Valuation as a Logical Process 291 

Presently, however, the tentative purpose puts in its defense, 
appealing to yet other recognized ideals or standards of self- 
sacrifice, benevolence, or social justice as witnesses in its 
favor. The conflict thus takes on the subject-predicate form, 
as has already been explained. On the one hand we have 
the undefined but strongly insistent concrete purpose; on 
the other hand we have a number of symbolic concepts or uni- 
versal standing for accepted and accredited habitual modes 
of conduct. The problem is that of working the two sides 
of the situation together into a unified and harmonious plan 
of conduct which shall be at once concrete and particular, 
as a plan chosen by way of solution of a given present 
emergency, and universal, as having due regard for past 
modes of conduct, and as itself worthy of consideration in 
coping with future emergencies. 

Now, how shall we discriminate the ethical and the eco- 
nomic aspects of the situation which we have described? 
We shall most satisfactorily do this through a consideration 
of the various sorts of conditions and means of which account 
must be taken in working the situation through to a solution, 
or (to express it more accurately) the various sorts of con- 
ditions and means which need to be defined over against the 
purpose as the purpose gradually develops into detailed form. 

We may say, first of all, that there are psychological 
conditions which must be taken into consideration in the 
case before us. Our thesis is that in so far as a situation gives 
rise to the determination of psychological conditions and is 
advanced along the way toward final solution through deter- 
mination of these, the situation is an ethical one. In other 
words, we hold that the ends at issue in the situation are 
* 'related" in so far as they depend upon the same set of psycho- 
logical conditions. In so far as these statements are not true 
of the situation there must be a resort to economic judgment. 

By the general questions suggested above as presenting 



292 Studies in Logical Theoey 

themselves to the agent we have indicated in what way the 
course of action taken must have regard to certain psycho- 
logical considerations. Entering upon the new way of life 
will inevitably lessen the agent's interest in his present 
professional pursuits and so make difficult, and in the end 
even irksome, any attempt at continuing in them either as a 
partial means of livelihood or as a recreation. The new work 
will be absorbing — as indeed it must be if it is to be worth 
while. In the same way the man must recognize that his 
nature is not one of the rare ones so richly endowed in 
capacity for sympathy that constant familiarity with general 
conditions of misery and suffering does not dull their fine- 
ness of sensibility to the special concerns and interests of 
particular individuals. If he takes his suffering fellow-men 
at large for his children, his own children will probably 
suffer just in so far the loss of a father's special sympathy 
and understanding care. And likewise he must be drawn 
away and isolated from his friends, for it will be hard for 
him, he must foresee, to hold free and intimate converse with 
men whose ways of thinking lie apart from his own con- 
trolling interest and for whose insensibility to the things 
that move him so profoundly he must come more and more 
to feel a certain impatience if not contempt. Not to enlarge 
upon these possibilities and others of like nature, we must 
see that reflection upon the situation must presently bring 
to consciousness these various consequences of the kind of 
action which is proposed and a recognition that the ground 
of relation between them and the action proposed lies in 
certain qualities and limitations of his own nature. These 
latter are for him the general psychological conditions of 
action, his "empirical self," the general nature of which he 
has doubtless already come to be familiar with in many 
former situations perhaps wholly different in superficial 
aspect from from the present one. 



Valuation as a Logical Process 293 

Now, just in so far as there is this relation of mutual 
exclusiveness between the end proposed and certain of the 
standard ends or modes of conduct which are involved, judg- 
ment will be by the direct or ethical method of adjustment 
presently to be described. Let us assume accordingly that 
a tentative solution of the problem has been reached to 
the effect that a portion of the lawyer's time shall be given 
to his profession and to his family life, and that the remain- 
der shall be given to a moderate participation in the social 
propaganda. Over against this tentative ethical solution, as 
its warrant in the sense explained above, will stand in the 
survey of the situation that may now be taken a certain 
fairly definite disposition or Anlage of the capacities and 
functions of the empirical self. 1 Now on the basis of the 
ethical solution thus reached there will be further study of 
the situation, perhaps as a result of failure in the attempt to 
carry the solution into practice, but more probably as a 
further preparation for overt action. Forthwith it develops 
that the compromise proposed will be impossible. Participa- 
tion in the social agitation will excite hostility on the part 
of the classes from which possible clients would come and 
will cause distrust and a suspicion of inattention to details 
of business among the lawyer's present clientage. There 
are, in a word, a whole assemblage of "external" sociological 
conditions (and we need not stop to speak of physical 
conditions which co-operate with these and contribute to 
their effect) which effectually veto the plan proposed. In 
general these external conditions are such as to deprive the 
agent of the means of living in the manner which the ethical 
determination of the end proposes. In the present case, 
unless some other more feasible compromise can be devised, 
either the one extreme or the other must be chosen — either 
continuance in the profession and the corresponding general 

i This would appear to be the logical value of functional psychology as a science 
of mental process. 



294 Studies in Logical Theory 

scheme of life or the social propaganda and reliance upon 
such scant and precarious income as it may incidentally 
afford. 

We can now define the economic aspect of a situation in 
terms of our present illustration. The end which the lawyer 
had in view in a vague and tentative way was, as we saw, 
defined with reference to his ethical standards — that is to 
say, a certain measure of participation in the new work was 
determined as satisfactory at once to his ideals of devotion 
to the cause of social justice and to his sense of obligation to 
himself and to his family. In this sense, logically speaking, 
a subject was defined to which a system of predicates, com- 
prehended perhaps under the general predicate of right or 
good, applies. Now, however, it appears, from the inspection 
of the material and social environment, that the execution of 
this purpose, perfectly in accord though it may be with the 
spiritual capacities and powers of the agent, is possible only 
on pain of certain other consequences, certain other sacri- 
fices, which have not hitherto been considered. That a 
half-hearted interest in his profession would still not prevent 
his earning a moderate income from it was never questioned 
in the ethical "first approximation" to a final decision, but 
now the issue is fairly presented, and, as we must see, in a 
very difficult and distressing way; for the essence of the 
situation is that the ends now in conflict, that of earning a 
living and caring for his family and that of laboring for the 
social good, are not intrinsically (that is, from the stand- 
point of the empirical self) incompatible. On the contrary, 
these two ends are psychologically quite compatible, as the 
outcome of the ethical judgment shows; only the "external" 
conditions oppose them to each other. The difficulty of the 
case lies, then, just in the fact that the conflicting ends, both 
standing, as they do, for strong personal interests of the self, 
nevertheless cannot be brought to an adjustment by the 



Valuation as a Logical Process 295 

direct method of an appportionment between them of the 
"spiritual resources" or "energies" of the self. Instead, 
the case is one calling for an apportionment of the external 
means, and so, proximately, not for immediate determination 
of the final end, but for economic determination of the means. 

We come now to the task of describing, so far as this 
may be possible, the judgment or valuation-processes which 
correspond to the types of situation thus distinguished. We 
are able now to see that these must be constructive processes, 
in the sense that in and through them courses of conduct 
adapted to unique situations are shaped by the concourse of 
established standards with a new end which has arisen and 
put in its claim for recognition. We can see, moreover, that 
these valuation- processes effect a construction of a different 
order from that given in factual judgment. Factual judg- 
ment determines external objects as means or conditions 
of action from standpoints suggested by the analysis and 
development of ends. Judgments of valuation determine 
concrete purposes from standpoints given in recognized 
general purposes of the self — purposes which are general in 
virtue of their having been taken by abstraction from con- 
crete cases, in which they have received particular formula- 
tion as purposes, and set apart as typical modes of conduct 
in general serviceable to the "energetic" self. 1 Logically 
factual judgment is at all times subordinate to valuational; 
when valuational judgment has become consciously deliber- 
ate, this logical subordination becomes explicit and factual 
judgment appears in its true character. Its essential func- 
tion is that of presenting the conditions which sanction and 
stimulate our ethically and economically determined pur- 
poses. 2 Finally, in the construction of purposes and recon- 

i We have already given a slight sketch of the historical process here character- 
ized in the barest logical terms. 

2 Further consideration of the problem of factual judgment must be deferred to 
Part V. 



296 Studies in Logical Theoky 

struction of standards in valuation the ideal of the expansion 
and development of the "energetic" self controls — not as a 
"presented" or contentual self prescribing particular modes 
of conduct, but as a principle prescribing the greatest possible 
openness to suggestion and an impartial application of the 
method of valuation to the case in hand. As we have said, 
in whatever sensuous image we figure the "energetic" self, 
its essential character lies in its function of stimulating 
methodical valuation. In place of the two-faced and ambigu- 
ous "presented" self, which is characteristic of the stage 
of conscience, we now have in the stage of valuation the 
"energetic" self on the one hand and standards on the other. 1 
We have now to consider the actual procedure of valua- 
tion, and first the ethical form as above defined. Bearing 
in mind that we are not concerned with cases of obedience 
to authority or deference to conscience, let us take a case of 
genuine moral conflict such as we were considering some 
time since. Suppose that one has the impulse to indulge in 
some form of amusement which he has been in the habit of 
considering frivolous or absolutely wrong. The end, as soon 
as imaged, or rather as the condition of its being imaged, 
encounters past habits of conduct symbolized by standards — 
standards which may be presented under a variety of forms, 
a maxim learned in early childhood, the ideal of a Stoic 
sage or Christian saint, the example of some friend, or a pre- 
cept put in abstract terms, but which, however presented, 
are essentially symbolic of established habits of thought or 
action. 2 Solution of such a problem proceeds, in general, 
along two closely interwoven lines: (1) collation and com- 
parison of cases recognized as conforming to the standard, 

1 The relation of the empirical self to the "energetic" and to standards will 
come in for statement in Part V in the connection just referred to. 

2 It might be possible to construct a " logic " of these various types of working 
moral standard in such a way as to show that in each type there is implied the one 
next higher morphologically, and ultimately the highest — that is, some sort of con- 
cept of the " energetic " self. 



Valuation as a Logical Process 297 

with a view to determining the standard type of conduct in 
a less ambiguous way, and (2) definition of the relations 
between this type of conduct and other recognized types in 
the catalogue of virtues. 

Now, these two movements are in fact inseparable, for, 
without reference to the entire system of virtues of which 
the one now asserting itself is a member, the comparison of 
cases with a view to definition of the virtue would be blind 
and hopeless of any outcome. The agent in the case before 
us desires to be temperate in amusement and to make profit- 
able use of leisure time, but after all he may wonder whether 
these ideals really require the austerities of certain mediaeval 
saints of the Stoic ataraxy. The saint's feats of spiritual 
athletics may have served a useful purpose, in ruder times, 
as evidence of human power to lead a virtuous and thought- 
ful life, but can such self-denial now be required of the 
moral man? It is apparent, in short, that the superficially 
conceived ideal must be analyzed. We must consider the 
"spirit" of our saint or hero, not the letter of his conduct, 
as we say, and in interpreting it make due allowance for the 
conditions of the time in which he lived and the grade of 
general intelligence of those he sought to edify. Whether 
our standard is a person or a parable or an abstractly formu- 
lated precept, the logic of the situation is the same in every 
case of judgment. The analysis of a standard cannot pro- 
ceed without the "synthesis" or co-ordination of the type of 
conduct thereby defined with other distinguishable recog- 
nized types of conduct into a comprehensive ideal of life as 
a whole. In the last resort the implicit relations of all the 
virtues will be made explicit in the process of defining accu- 
rately any one of them. 

In the last resort, then, the predicate of the ethical judg- 
ment is the whole system of the recognized habits of the 
agent, and each judgment -process is in its outcome a read- 



298 Studies in Logical Theory 

justment of the system to accommodate the new habit that 
has been seeking admission. Both the old habits and the 
new impulse have been modified in the process just as the 
intension of a class term and the particular "subsumed" 
under the class are reciprocally modified in the ordinary judg- 
ment of sense-perception. "We are once more able to see 
that the process of ethical judgment or valuation is not a pro- 
cess of subsumption or classification, of ascertaining the value 
of particular modes of conduct, but on the contrary a process 
of determining or assigning value. Each judgment process 
means a new and more or less thoroughgoing redetermina- 
tion of the self and hence a fixation of the ethical value of 
the conduct whose emergence as a purpose gave rise to the 
process. The moral experience is not essentially and in its 
typical emergencies a recognition of values with a view to 
shaping one's course accordingly, but rather a determining 
or a fixation of values which shall serve for the time being, 
but be subject at all times to re-appraisal. 

If the present discussion were primarily intended as a 
contribution to general ethical theory, it would be a part of 
our purpose to show in detail that any formulation of an 
ethical ideal in contentual "material" terms must always be 
inadequate for practical purposes and hence theoretically 
indefensible. This, as we believe, could be shown true of the 
popularly current ideal of self-realization as well as of hedon- 
ism in its various forms and the older systems of conscience 
or the moral sense. These all are essentially fixed ideals 
admitting of more or less complete specification in point 
of content and regarded as tests or canons by appeal to 
which the moral quality of any concrete act can be deduct- 
ively ascertained. They are the ethical analogues of such 
metaphysical principles as the Cartesian God or the Sub- 
stance of Spinoza, and the logic implied in regarding them 
as adequate standards for the valuation of conduct is the 



Valuation as a Logical Pkocess 299 

logic whereby the Rationalist sought to deduce from con- 
cepts the world of particular things. The present desidera- 
tum in ethical theory would appear to be, not further attempts 
at definition of a moral ideal of any sort, but the development 
of a logical method for the valuation of ideals and ends in 
which the results of more modern researches in the theory of 
knowledge should be made use of — in which the concept of 
self should play the part, not of the concept of Substance in 
a rationalistic metaphysics, 1 but of such a principle as that of 
the conservation of energy, for example, in scientific infer- 
ence. 2 

We have, then, in each readjustment of the activities of 
the self a reconstruction in knowledge of ethical reality — a 
reconstruction which at the same time involves the assign- 
ment of a definite value to the new mode of conduct which 
has been worked out in the readjustment. We conclude, then, 
that the ethical experience is one of continuous construction 
and reconstruction of an order of objective reality, within 
which the world of sense-perception is comprised as the world 
of more or less refractory means to the attainment of ethical 
purposes. In this process of construction of ethical reality 
current moral standards play the same part as concepts 
already defined — that is to say, the agent's present habits — ■ 

lit matters not at all whether, in ethics or metaphysics, our universal be 
abstract or on the other hand "concrete," like Green's conception of the self, or a 
" Hegelian " Absolute. Its logical use in the determination of particulars must be 
essentially the same in either case. 

2 In this connection reference may be made to Me. Taylob's recent work, The 
Problem of Conduct. Mr. Taylor reduces the moral life to terms of an ultimate con- 
flict between the ideals of egoism and social justice, holding that the conflict is in 
theory irreconcilable. With this negative attitude toward current standards in 
ethical theory one may well be in accord without accepting Mr. Taylor's further con- 
tention that a theory of ethics is therefore impossible. Because the " ethics of sub- 
sumption " is demonstrably futile it by no means follows that a method of ethics 
cannot be developed along the lines of modern scientific logic which shall be as valid 
as the procedure of the investigator in the sciences. Mr. Taylor's logic is virtually 
the same as that of the ethical theories which he criticises ; because an ethical ideal 
is impossible, a theory of ethics is impossible also. One is reminded of Me. Bead- 
ley's criticism of knowledge in the closing chapters of the Logic as an interesting 
parallel. 



300 Studies in Logical Theory 

do in the typical judgment of sense-perception. They play 
the part of symbols suggestive of recognized and heretofore 
habitual modes of action with reference to conduct of the 
type of the particular instance that is under consideration, 
serving thus to bring to bear upon the subject of the judg- 
ment sooner or later the entire moral self. The outcome is 
a new self, and so for the future a new standard, in which 
the past self as represented by the former standard and the 
new impulse have been brought to mutual adjustment. Our 
position is that this adjustment is essentially experimental 
and that in it the general principle of the unity and expan- 
sion of the self must be presupposed, as in inductive infer- 
ence general principles of teleology, of the conservation of 
energy, and of organic interconnection of parts in living 
things are presupposed. The unity and increase of the self 
is not a test or canon, but a principle of moral experimenta- 
tion. 1 

Finally, we must note one further parallel between ethical 
judgment and the judgment of sense-perception and science. 
However the man of science may, as a nominalist, regard 
the laws of nature as mere observed uniformities of fact and 
particulars as the true realities, these same laws will never- 
theless on occasion have a distinctly objective character in 
his actual apprehension of them. The stubbornness with 
which a certain material may refuse to lend itself to a 
desired purpose will commonly be reinforced, as a matter of 
apprehension, by one's recognition of the "scientific neces- 
sity" of the phenomenon. As offering resistance the thing 
itself, as we have seen, becomes objective ; so also does the 
law of which this case may be recognized as only a particu- 
lar example — and the other type of objectivity experience 
we need not here do more than mention as likewise possible 

i Mr. Bosanquet's discussion of the place of the principle of teleology in ana- 
logical inference will be found suggestive in this connection {Logic, Vol. II, 
chap. iii). 



Valuation as a Logical Process 301 

in one's apprehension of the law as well as of the "facts" 
of nature. Both types of objectivity attach to the moral law 
as well. The standard that restrains is one "above" us or 
" beyond" us. Even Kant, as the similitude of the starry 
heavens would suggest, was not incapable of a faint "emo- 
tion of the heteronomous," and authority in one form or 
another is a moral force whose objective validity as moral, 
both in its inhibiting and in its sanctioning aspects, human 
nature is prone to acknowledge. The apprehension of 
objectivity is everywhere, as we have held, emotional. One 
type of situation in which the moral law takes on this char- 
acter is found in the interposition of the law to check a for- 
ward tendency ; the other is found in the instant of transition 
from doubt to the new adjustment that has been reached. 
In the one case the law is "inexorable" in its demands. In 
the other case there are two possibilities: If the adjustment 
has been essentially a rejection of the new "temptation," 
the law which one obeys is one no longer inexorable, but 
sustaining, as a rock of salvation. If the adjustment is a 
distinctly new attitude, the sense of the objectivity of the 
principle embodied in it will commonly be less strong, if not 
for the time being almost wholly wanting ; but in the mo- 
ment of overt action it will in some degree wear the charac- 
ter of a firm truth upon which one has taken his stand. 

This general view of the logical constitution of the moral 
experience may suggest a comparison with the fundamental 
doctrine of the British Intellectualist school. The Intellec- 
tualist writers were very largely guided in their expositions 
by the desire of refuting on the one hand Hobbes and on 
the other Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. Against Hobbes 
they wished to establish the obligatory character of the 
moral law entirely apart from sanction or enactment by 
political authority. Against the Sentimentalists they wished 
to vindicate its objectivity and permanence. This twofold 



302 Studies in Logical Theory 

purpose they accomplished by holding that the morality of 
conduct lies in its conformity to the "objective nature of 
things," the knowledge of which, in its moral aspects, is 
logically deducible from certain moral axioms, self-evident 
like those of mathematics. Now this mathematical analogy 
is the key to the whole position of the Intellectualist writers. 
By so conceiving the nature of knowledge these men seri- 
ously weakened their strong general position. Mathematics 
is just that species of knowledge which is most remote from 
and apparently independent of any reference to conduct, and 
the Intellectualists, by choosing it as their ideal, were 
thereby rendered incapable of explaining the obligatoriness 
of the moral law. An adequate psychology of knowledge 
would have obviated this difficulty in their system. 

The occasion for economic judgment is given, as we have 
seen, in a conflict between ends not incompatible, in view of 
any ascertainable conditions of the agent's nature as an 
empirical self, but inhibitory of each other in view of what 
we have described as conditions external to the agent. Thus 
the lawyer in our illustration found his plan of compromise 
thwarted by the existence of such sociological conditions as 
would make the practice of his profession, in the manner 
intended, impossible, and so cut off his income. Similarly 
the peasant in a European country finds that (for reasons 
which, more probably, he does not understand) he can no 
longer earn a living in the accustomed way, and emigrates 
to a country in which his capital and his physical energies 
may be more profitably employed. So also in the everyday 
lives of all of us ends and interests quite disparate, so far as 
any relation to each other through our psychical capacities 
is concerned, stand very frequently in opposition, neverthe- 
less, and calling for adjustment. We must make a choice 
between amusement or intellectual pursuits or the means of 



Valuation as a Logical Process 303 

aesthetic culture, on the one hand, and the common necessa- 
ries of life on the other, and the difficulty of the situation 
lies just in absence of any sort of "spiritual affinity' ' be- 
tween these ends. There is no necessary ratio between the 
satisfaction of the common needs of life and the cultivation 
of the higher faculties — no ratio for which the individual 
can ever find a sanction in the constitution of his empirical 
self through the direct method of ethical valuation. The 
common needs must have their measure of recognition, but 
no attempted ethical valuation of them can ever come to a 
result convincingly warranted to the "energetic" self by 
psychological conditions. The economic situation as such is 
in this sense (that is, from the standpoint of any recognized 
ethical standards) unintelligible. It is this ethical unintelli- 
gibility that often lends a genuine element of tragedy to 
situations which press urgently and in which the ends at 
issue are of great ethical moment. It is no small matter to 
the emigrant, for example, that he must cut the very 
roots by which he has grown to the sort of man he finds 
himself to be. His whole nature protests against this 
violence, and questions its necessity, though the necessity is 
unmistakable and it would be quite impossible for him not 
to act accordingly. Nevertheless, tragic as such a conflict 
may well be, it does not differ in any logically essential way, 
does not differ in its degree of strictly logical difficulty, from 
the ethically much less serious economic problems of our 
everyday life. 

Now, we have already defined the economic act for which 
economic judgment is preparatory as being, in general terms, 
the diversion of certain means from a present use to which 
they have been devoted to a new use which has come to seem 
in a general way desirable. 1 Thus, in the cases just men- 
tioned, the lawyer contemplates the virtual purchase of his 

1 See above, p. 243 and p. 259 ad fin. 



304 Studies in Logical Theory 

new career by the income which his profession might in 
years to come afford him, the emigrant seeks a better market 
for his labor, and the pleasure-seeker and the ambitions student 
and the buyer of a commodity in the market propose to them- 
selves, each one, the diversion from some hitherto intended 
use of a sum of money. Manifestly it is immaterial from 
our logical point of view whether the means in question 
which one proposes to apply in some new way are in the 
nature of physical and mental strength, or materials and 
implements of manufacture ready to be used, or means of 
purchase of some sort wherewith the desired service or com- 
modity may be obtained at once. The economic problem, to 
state it technically, is the problem of the reapplicability of 
the means, interpreting the category of means quite broadly. 

In a word, then, the method of procedure adapted to the 
economic type of situation is that of valuation of the means, 
not that of direct valuation of the ends. This method is one 
of valuation since, like the ethical method, it is determina- 
tive of a purpose, but it accomplishes this result in its own 
distinctive way. The problem of our present analysis will 
accordingly be how this method of valuation of the means 
is able to help toward an adjustment of disparate or unre- 
lated ends which the ethical method is inadequate to effect. 

Let us assume that a vague purpose of foreign travel, for 
example, has presented itself in imagination, and that the 
preliminary stage of ethical judgment has been passed 
through, with the result that the purpose, in a more definite 
form than it could have at first, is now ready for economic 
consideration. In the first place the cost of the journey 
must be determined, and this step, in terms of our present 
point of view, is simply a methodological device whereby 
certain ends which the standards involved in the stage of 
ethical judgment could not suggest or could not effectually 
take into co-operation with themselves in their determination 



Valuation as a Logical Process 305 

of the end are brought into play. Ascertaining the means 
suggests these disparate ends, these established modes of 
use of the means, with the result that the agent's "forward 
tendency" is checked. Shall the necessary sums be spent 
in foreign travel or shall they be spent in the present ways — 
in providing various physical necessities and comforts, or 
for various forms of amusement, or in increasing investments 
in business enterprises ? These modes of use do not admit 
of ethical comparison with the plan of foreign travel, and 
the agent's interest must therefore now be centered on the 
means. 

It is in this check to the agent's forward tendency that the 
logical status of the means is evinced. As merely so much 
money the means could only serve to further the execution 
of the purpose that is forming, since under the circumstances 
it could only prompt immediate expenditure. Like the subject 
in factual judgment, the means in economic judgment have 
their problematic aspect which as effectually hinders the 
desired use of them as could any palpable physical defect. 
This problematic aspect consists in the fact of the present 
established mode of use which the now-forming purpose 
threatens to disturb, and it is the agent's interest in this mode 
of use that turns his attention to the valuation of the means. 

It need hardly be pointed out that in the economic life 
we find situations exactly corresponding to those of "con- 
science and temptation" and mechanical "pull and haul" 
which were discriminated in the ethical sphere and marked 
off from judgment properly so called. Indeed it seems 
reasonable to think, on general grounds of introspection, that 
these methods of decision (if they deserve the name) are, 
relatively speaking, more frequently relied upon in the eco- 
nomic than in the moral life. The economic method of true 
judgment is roundabout and more complex and more difficult 
than ethical, and involves a more express recourse to those 



306 Studies in Logical Theory 

abstract conceptions which for the most part are only im- 
plicitly involved in valuation of the other type. The economic 
type of valuation, in fact, differs from the ethical, not in an 
absolute or essential way, but rather in the explicitness with 
which it brings to light and lays bare the vital elements in 
valuation as such. In general, then, the economic process 
would seem necessarily to embrace three stages, which will first 
of all be enumerated and then very briefly explained and dis- 
cussed. These are: (1) a preliminary consideration of the 
means necessary to attain the end — which must be vague and 
tentative, of course, for the reason that the end as imagined 
is so, as compared with the fulness of detail which must belong 
to it before it can be finally accepted; (2) a consideration 
of the means, as thus provisionally taken, in the light of their 
present devotion to other purposes, this present devotion 
of them being the outcome, in some degree at least, of past 
valuation; (3) final definition of the means with reference 
to the proposed use through an adjustment effected between 
this and the factors involved in the past valuation. 

1. In the first stage as throughout, it must be carefully 
noted, the means are under consideration not primarily in 
their physical aspect, but simply as subject to a possible 
redisposition. Thus it is not money as lawful currency 
receivable at the steamship office for an ocean passage, nor 
tools and materials and labor-power technically suitable for 
the production of a desired object, that is the subject of the 
economic judgment. The problem of redisposition would of 
course not be raised were the means not technically adapt- 
able to the purpose, nor on the other hand can the means in 
the course of economic judgment, as a rule, escape some 
measure of further (factual) inquiry into their technical 
properties; but the standpoints are nevertheless distinct. 
Again, it must be noted that the means in this first stage 
will be only roughly measured. The length of one's stay 



Valuation as a Logical Process 307 

abroad, the size of the house one wishes to build, the purpose 
whatever it may be, is still undefined — these are in fact the 
very matters which the process must determine — and in the 
first instance it is "money in general" or "a large sum of 
money" with reference to which we raise the economic 
problem. The category of quantity is in fact essentially an 
economic one ; it is essentially a standpoint for determining 
the means of action in such a way as to facilitate their econo- 
mic valuation. The reader familiar with the writings of the 
Austrian school of economists will easily recall how uniformly 
in their discussions of the principle of marginal utility these 
writers assume outright in the first place the division of the 
stock of goods into definite units, and then raise the question 
of how the value of a unit is measured. The stock contains 
already a hundred bushels of wheat or ten loaves of bread — 
apparently as a matter of metaphysical necessity — whereas 
in fact the essential economic problem is this very one of 
how "wheat at large" comes to be put in sacks of a certain 
size and " bread in general " to be baked in twelve-ounce 
loaves. The subdivision of the stock and the valuation of 
the unit are not successive stages, but inseparably correlative 
phases of the valuation-process as a whole. The outcome 
may be stated either way, in accordance with one's interest 
in the situation. 

2. But the unmeasured means as redisposable in an as yet 
undetermined way bring to consciousness established meas- 
ured uses to which the means have been heretofore assigned 
in definite amounts. In this way the process of determining 
a definite quantum as redisposable (which is to say, of attain- 
ing to a definite acceptable plan of conduct) can begin. 
How, then, does this fact of past assignment to uses still 
recognized as desirable figure in the situation? In the first 
place the past assignment may have been (1) an outcome of 
past economic valuation, (2) an unhesitating or non-economic 



308 Studies in Logical Theory 

act executive of an ethical decision, or (3) an act of more or 
less conscious obedience to "conscience" or "authority." 
In either case it now stands as a course of conduct which at 
the time was, in the way explained above, sanctioned to the 
agent, to the "energetic" self, by the means and conditions 
recognized as bearing upon it. In this sense, then, we have, 
in this recognition of the past adjustment and of the eco- 
nomic character which the means now have in virtue of it, 
what we may term a judgment of "energy-equivalence" 
between the means and their established uses. For to the 
agent it was the essential meaning of the sense of sanction 
felt when the means were assigned to these uses that the 
"energetic" self would on the whole be furthered thereby 
— and this in view of all the sacrifices that this use would 
entail, or in view of the sacrifices required for the production 
of the means, if the case were one in which the means were 
not at hand and could only be secured by a more or less 
extended production process. 

In the illustration we have been considering, it will be 
observed, there is an extensive schedule of present uses 
which the new project calls in question and from which the 
means must be diverted. This is in fact the commoner case. 
A new use of money will affect, as a rule, not simply a single 
present mode of expenditure, but will very probably involve 
a readjustment throughout the whole schedule of expendi- 
ture which our separate past valuations of money have in 
effect co-operated in establishing. So likewise if we wish to 
use part of a store of building materials or of food, or of any 
other subdivisible commodity, we encounter an ordered sys- 
tem of consumption rather than a single predetermined use 
which we have not yet enjoyed. Where this is the case the 
whole process of valuation is greatly facilitated, but this is 
not essential. The means in cases of true economic valua- 
tion may be capable of but a single use, like a railroad ticket 



Valuation as a Logical Process 309 

or a perishable piece of fruit, or of a virtually endless 
series of uses, like a painting or a literary masterpiece. 
Whether the means figure as representing but a single use or 
stand for the conservation of an extensive system, their econo- 
mic significance is the same. They are the " energy-equiva- 
lent" of this use or system of uses considered as an act or 
system of acts of consumption in furtherance of the self. 
Their past assignment meant then and means now simply 
this, that the "energetic" self would thereby gain more than 
it would lose through the inevitable sacrifices. This is the 
economic significance of the means in virtue of which they 
are now problematic to the extent of checking, for a time at 
least, forward tendency toward the desired end. 1 

3. The judgment of energy-equivalence, then, defines the 
inhibiting economic aspect of the means, and moreover defines 
it for the means as subdivided and set apart for a schedule of 
uses if this was the form of the past adjustments to which 
reference is made. The problem of the third stage of the 
process is that of " bringing subject and predicate together," 
as we have elsewhere expressed it — that is, of determining, 
in the light of the economic character of the means as just 
ascertained, what measure of satisfaction, if any, may be 
accorded to the new and as yet undefined desire. The new 
disposition of the means, if one is to be made, must bring to 
the "energetic" self a degree of furtherance and development 
which shall be sensibly as great as would come from the estab- 
lished method of consumption. The means, as economic, 

i We use the expression " energy-equivalent " because the "excess" gained by 
the self through the past adjustment is not of importance at just this point. The 
essential significance of the means now is not that they "cost" less than they promised 
to bring in in energy, but that because they required sacrifice the self will now lose 
unless they are allowed to fulfil the promise. They are the logical equivalent of the 
established modes of consumption from the standpoint of conservation of the 
energies of the self, not the mathematical equivalent. 

It would be desirable, if there were space, to present a brief account of the 
psychological basis of the concepts of energy and energy-equivalence which here 
come into play, but this must be omitted. 



310 Studies in Logical Theory 

are means to the conservation of the old adjustment, and 
any new disposal of them or of any portion of them for a 
full or partial execution of the new purpose must make out 
at least as good a case. It must appear that the new dispo- 
sition is not only physically possible, but also economically 
necessary in the light of the same principle of expansion of 
the self as sanctioned the disposition now in force. It must 
make the self in some way more efficient — whether more 
strong and symmetrical in body, more skilled in work, more 
clear of brain, or more efficient in whatever other concrete 
way may be desired. 

Psychologically the sanction of any course of action 
which is taken as evidence of conformity to the general rule 
thus inadequately stated is the more or less strong sense of 
"relaxation" of attentive strain which comes with the shift 
of attention, in the final survey, from means to end. We may 
accordingly, for the sake of greater definiteness, restate in 
the following terms the process which has just been sketched : 
The ends in conflict at the outset are ends which do not 
sensibly bear upon each other through their dependence 
upon a common fund of psychical capacities or energies. 
They are related in the agent's experience solely through 
their dependence upon a common stock of physical means, 
and they do not therefore admit of adjustment through 
the ethical type of process. The economic process consists 
essentially of a revival in imagination of the experiences 
accompanying the former disposition of the means and a 
re-enforcement by these of the means in their adherence to 
that former and still recognized disposition. If an adapted 
form of the new end can be imagined which will mediate a 
like experience of relaxation when the attention shifts from 
the means, thus emotionally re-enforced in their economic 
status, to the end as thus conceived, the means will be recog- 
nized as economically redisposable. Thus the method of 



Valuation as a Logical Process 311 

valuation of the means makes possible, through appeal to the 
sensibly invariable experience of relaxation or assurance in 
the outcome of judgment, a co-ordination of disparate ends 
which the ethical method of direct adjustment could not 
effect. 1 

The economic process thus presents on analysis the same 
factors as does the ethical. On the subject side we have the 
means— which as economic are problematic as to their inap- 
plicability. On the predicate side we have the suggested 
mode of reapplication in tension against conservative ideals 
of application to established purposes. Just as it may be 
held that the general ethical predicate is that of Right or 
Good — that is, deserving of adoption into the system of 
one's ends — so the economic predicate applied to the means 
as these come in the end to be denned is the general con- 
cept Reappliable. And in general the distinction of the 
types is not an ultimate one, for the more deliberately and 
rigorously the method of economic valuation is pursued — - 
in such a case, for example, as that of the prospective emigrant 
— the stronger will be the agent's sense of a genuinely 
ethical sanction as belonging to the decision which is in the 
end worked out. The more certain and sincere, therefore, 
will be the agent's judgment that the means must be reap- 
plied, for on the sense of sanction of which we speak rests 
the explicit judgment that the purpose formed is expansive 
of the self. 

From the analysis thus presented it must appear, there- 
fore, that the economic type of judgment is in our sense a 
constructive process. Its function is to determine a particu- 
lar commodity or portion of a stock of some commodity in 
its economic character as disposable, and in performing 
this function it presents a definite reality in the economic 

i Putting it negatively, the renunciation of the new end involves a "greater" 
sacrifice than all the sacrifices which adherence to the present system of consump- 
tion can compensate. 



312 Studies in Logical Theory 

order. Moreover, in thus defining the particular, recourse is 
had to more or less distinctively namable economic standards 
which are in the last resort symbols representing established 
habits of consumption in the light of which the means, 
prima facie, seem not to be available for any other purposes. 
These economic standards, like ethical standards and the 
class concepts of science and our ordinary perceptual experi- 
ence, are, with all due respect to nominalism, constitutive of 
a real world — a world which is real because it lends form and 
significance to our knowledge of particulars as stimuli to 
conduct. 

We have now before us sufficient reason for our thesis 
that the valuation- process in both its forms is constructive 
of an order of reality, and we have sufficiently explained the 
relation which the economic order bears to the inclusive and 
logically prior order of ethical objects and relations. We are 
now in a position to see that in being thus constructive of 
reality (taking the conception in its proper functional mean- 
ing) they are at the same time constructive of the self, since 
the reality which they construct is in its functional aspect 
the assemblage of means and conditions, of stimuli, in short, 
for the development and expansion of the self. We shall 
bring this main division of our study to a close with a series 
of remarks in explanation and illustration of this view. 

Let us consider once more the factors present in the 
agent's final survey of the situation after the completion of 
the judgment -process and on the verge of action. These 
factors are, as we have seen, (1) recognition of conditions 
sanctioning the purpose formed, (2) recognition of the pur- 
pose as, in view of this sanction, warranted to the "energetic" 
self as an eligible method of expansion and development, and 
(3) recognition of the "energetic" self, conversely, as in 
possession, in virtue of the favorable conditions given in 



Valuation as a Logical Process 313 

factual judgment, of this new method of furtherance. These 
three factors are manifestly not so much factors co-operating 
in the situation as inseparable aspects of it distinguishable 
from each other and admitting of discriminative emphasis in 
accordance with the degree of reflective power which the 
individual may possess or choose to exercise. Strictly speak- 
ing these three aspects are present in every conscious recog- 
nition of a purpose as one's own and as presently to be 
carried into effect, but they are not always present in equal 
conspicuousness, and never with equal logical importance for 
the individual. In fact this enumeration of aspects coincides 
with our enumeration of the three stages in the evolution of 
the individual's conscious moral attitude toward new pur- 
poses given in impulse — in the third of which the last 
named of these aspects comes to the fore with the others in 
logical or functional subordination to it. 

Now it will be apparent on grounds of logic, as on the 
evidence of simple introspection, that in this third type of 
attitude — in the attitude of true valuation, that is to say — 
the energetic self cannot be indentified with the chosen pur- 
pose. The purpose is a determinate specified act to be per- 
formed subject to recognized conditions, and with the use of 
the co-ordinated means ; the self, on the other hand, is a pro- 
cess to which this particular purpose is, indeed, from the 
standpoint of the self's conservation and increase, indispen- 
sable, but which is nevertheless apart from the purpose in 
the sense that without the purpose it would still be a self, 
though perhaps a narrower and less developed one. Our 
standpoint here as elsewhere, the reader must remember, is 
the logical. It is the standpoint of the agent's own inter- 
pretation of his experience of judgment during the judgment- 
process and at its close, and not the standpoint of the psy- 
chological mediation of this experience as a series of occur- 
rences. Thus we are here far from wishing to deny the 



314 Studies in Logical Theoky 

general proposition that a man's purposes are an expression 
of his nature, as the psychologist might describe it, or the 
proposition that a man's conduct and his character are one 
and the same thing viewed from different points of view. We 
wish merely to insist upon the fact that these psychological 
propositions are not a true account of the agent's own expe- 
rience of himself and of his purposes while these latter are 
in the making or are on the verge of execution. There is 
indeed no conflict between this "inside view" of the judg- 
ment-process and of the final survey and the psychological 
propositions just mentioned. The identity of conduct and 
character means not simply that as the man is so does he 
act, but quite as much, and in a more important way, that as 
he acts so is he and so does he become. It is, then, the 
essence of the agent's own view of the situation that his 
character is in the making and that the purpose is the 
method to be taken. To the agent the self is not, indeed, 
independent of the purpose, for plainly it is recognized that 
upon just this purpose the self is, in the sense explained, in 
a vital way dependent. Nevertheless the self is in the 
agent's apprehension essentially beyond the purpose, and 
larger than the purpose, and even, we may say, metaphysically 
apart from it. Now the conclusion which we wish to draw 
from this examination of the agent's attitude in judgment is 
that no formulation of an ideal self can ever be adequate to 
his purposes, not simply because any such formulation must, 
as Green allows, inevitably be incomplete and inconsistent, 
but because the self as a process is in the agent's own appre- 
hension of it inherently incapable of formulation. Any 
formulation that might be attempted must be in terms of 
particular purposes (since in a modern ethical theory the self 
must be a "concrete" and not an abstract universal), and it 
is easy to see that any such would be, to the agent in the 
attitude of true ethical judgment, worse than useless. It 



Valuation as a Logical Process 315 

could as contentual and concrete only be a composite of 
existing standards, more or less coherently put together, 
offered to the agent as a substitute for the new standard 
which he is trying to work out. If there were not need of 
.a new standard there would be no judgment -process; the 
agent must be, to say the least, embarrassed, even if the 
unwitting imposture does not deceive him, when such a com- 
posite, useful and indeed indispensable in its proper place as 
a standard of reference and a source of suggestion, is urged 
upon him as suitable for a purpose which in the very nature 
of the case it is logically incapable of serving. 1 

To the agent, then, the "energetic" self can never be 
represented as an ideal — can never be expressed in terms of 
purpose — since it is in its very nature logically incongruous 
with any possible particular purpose or generalization of 
such purposes. It is commonly imaged by the agent in 
some manner of sensuous terms, but it is imaged, in so far as 
the case is one of judgment in a proper sense, for use as a 
stimulus to the methodical process of valuation — not as a 
standard, which if really adequate would make valuation 
unnecessary. The agent's consciousness of himself as "en- 
ergetic" cannot be an ideal; it comes to consciousness only 
through the endeavor, first to follow, and then, in a later 
stage of moral development, to use ideals, and has for its 
function, as a presentation, the incitement of the process of 
methodical use of standards in the control of the agent's 

1 Green, as is well known, allows that any formulation of the ideal self must be 
incomplete, but holds that it is not for this reason useless. But this is to assume 
that development in the ideal is never to be radically reconstructive, that the ideal 
is to expand and fill out along established and unchangeable lines of growth so that all 
increase shall be in the nature of accretion. The self as a system is fixed and all 
individual moral growth is in the nature of approximation to this absolute ideal. 
This would appear to be essentially identical in a logical sense with Mr. Spencer's 
hypothesis of social evolution as a process of gradual approach to a condition of 
perfect adaptation of society and the individual to each other in an environment to 
which society is perfectly adapted — a condition in which " perfectly evolved " indi- 
viduals shall live in a state of blessedness in conformity to the requirements of 
"absolute ethics." For a criticism of this latter type of view see Mr. Ta.tloe'3 
above-mentioned work (chap, v, passim). 



316 Studies in Logical Theory 

impulsive ends. It is not an anticipatory vision of the final 
goal of life, but the agent's coming to consciousness of the 
general impulse and movement of the life that is. 

It is an inevitable consequence of acceptance of a con- 
tentual view of the "energetic" self as one's ideal that 
reflective morality should tend to degenerate into an intro- 
spective conscientiousness constantly in unstable equilibrium 
between a pharisaical selfishness on the one hand and a mor- 
ally scarcely more dangerous hypocrisy on the other. There 
is certainly much justice in the stinging characterization of 
" Neo-Hegelian Egoism" which Mr. Taylor somewhere in 
his unsearchable book applies to the currently prevailing 
conventionalized type of idealistic ethics. If the self of the 
valuation-process is an ultimate goal of effort, then there 
must certainly be an irreconcilable contrast to the disadvantage 
of the latter between the plain man's objective desire for right 
conduct, as such, and for the welfare of his fellow-beings, 
and the moralist's anxious questionings of the rectitude of 
the motives by which his conformity to the fixed moral 
standard are prompted. 1 Into the value and significance of 
the attitude of conscientious examination of one's moral mo- 
tives we are not here concerned to inquire, but need only 
insist, in accordance with our present view, that its value 
must be distinctly subordinate and incidental to the general 
course and outcome of the valuation-process. In the valua- 
tion-process, consciousness of self is not an object of solici- 
tude, but simply, we repeat, a pure presentation of stimulus, 
having for its office the incitement, and if need be the reincite- 
ment, of the attitude of deference to the suggestions of old 
standards and openness to the petitions of new impulse, and 
of methodically bringing these to bear upon each other. 

i For Gbeen's cautious defense of conscientiousness as a moral attitude see the 
Prolegomena to Ethics, Book IV, chap, i ; and for a statement of the present point 
of view as bearing upon Green's difficulty, see Dewey, The Study of Ethics: A Syl- 
labus, p. 37 ad fin., and Philosophical Review, Vol. II, pp. 661, 662. 



Valuation as a Logical Process 317 

The outcome of such a process, of course, cannot be pre- 
dicted — and for the same reasons as make unpredictable the 
scientist's factual hypothesis. Just as the scientist's data are 
incomplete and ill-assorted and unorganized, for the reason 
that they have, of necessity, been collected, and must at the 
outset be interpreted, in the light of present concepts, whose 
inadequacy the very existence of the problem at issue demon- 
strates, so the final moral purpose that shall be developed is 
not to be deduced from any possible inventory of the situa- 
tion as it stands. The process in both cases is one of recon- 
struction, and the test of the validity of the reconstruction 
must in both cases be of the same essentially practical char- 
acter. In both cases the process is constructive of reality, 
in the functional signification of the term. In both, the 
judgment process is constructive also of the self, in the 
sense that upon the determination of the agent's future atti- 
tude the cumulative outcome of his past attitudes is methodi- 
cally brought to bear. 1 

V 

Judgments of value are, then, objective in their import in 
the same sense as are the factual judgments in which the 
conditions of action are presented. The ideal problematic sit- 
uation is, in the last resort, ethical, in the sense of requiring 
for its solution determination of the new end that has arisen 
with reference to existing standards. In structure and in 
function the judgment in which the outcome of this process 
is presented is knowledge, and objective in the only valid 
acceptation of the term. 

1 Along the line thus inadequately suggested might be found an answer to certain 
criticisms of the attempt to dispense with a metaphysical idea of the self. Such 
criticisms usually urge that without reference to a metaphysical ideal no meaning 
attaches to such conceptions as "adjustment," "expansion," "furtherance," and 
the like as predicated of the moral acts of an agent in their effect upon the " ener- 
getic " self. Anything that one may do, it is said, is expansive of the self, if it be 
something new, except as we judge it by a metaphysical ideal of a rightly expanded 
self. For an excellent statement of this general line of criticism see Steatton, "A 
Psychological Test of Virtue," International Journal of Ethics, Vol. XI, p. 200. 



318 Studies in Logical Theory 

But, after all, it may be urged, is it not the essential 
mark of the objective that it should be accessible to all 
men, and not in the nature of the case valid for only a single 
individual? At best the objectivity of content which has 
been made out for the judgment of value is purely functional, 
and not such as can be verified by appeal to the consensus 
of other persons. The agent's assurance of the reality of 
the economic or ethical subject-matter which he is endeavor- 
ing to determine, and his sense of the objectivity of the 
results which he reaches, need not be denied. These may 
well enough be illusions of personal prejudice or passion, or 
even normal illusions of the reflective faculty, like that of 
interpreting the secondary qualities of bodies as objective in 
the same sense as are the "bulk, figure, extension, number, 
and motion of their solid parts." 1 Any man can see the 
physical object to which I point, and verify with his own eyes 
the qualities which I ascribe to it, but no man can either 
understand or verify my judgment that the purpose I have 
formed is in accord with rational ideals of industry and self- 
denial, or that this portion of my winter's fuel may be given 
to a neighbor who has none. 

But this line of objection proves too much, for, made 
consistent with itself, it really amounts to a denial that the 
very judgment of sense-perception, to which it appeals so 
confidently as a criterion, has objective import. The first 
division of this study was intended to show that every object 

iThe polemic of certain recent writers (as, for example, Ehrenfels in his Sys- 
tem der Werttheorie) against the objectivity of judgments of value appears to rest 
upon an uncritical acceptance of the time-honored distinction between "primary" 
and "secondary" qualities as equivalent to the logical distinction of subjective 
and objective. Thus Ehrenfels confutes "das Vorurteil von der objectiven 
Bedeutung des Wertbegriffes" by explaining it as due to a misleading usage of speech 
expressive of "an impulse, deep-rooted in the human understanding, to objectify 
its presentations" and then goes on to say "We do not desire things because we 
recognize the presence in them of a mysterious impalpable essence of Value but we 
ascribe value to them because we desire them." (Op. cit., Bd. I, p. 2.) This may serve 
to illustrate the easy possibility of confusing the logical and psychological points of 
view, as likewise does Ehrenfels's formal definition of value. (Bd. I., p. 65.) 



Valuation as a Logical Process 319 

in the experience of each individual is for the individual a 
unique construction of his own, determined in form and in 
details by individual interests and purposes, and therefore 
different from that object in the experience of any other 
individual which in social intercourse passes current as 
the same. The real object is for me the object which 
functions in my experience, presenting problematic aspects 
for solution, and lending itself more or less service- 
ably to my purposes; and this object is, we hold, not the 
object as socially current, but the complete object which, as 
complete in its determination with reference to my unique 
purposes, cannot possibly have social currency. The objec- 
tion as stated cuts away the very ground on which it rests, 
since the shortcoming which it finds in the judgment of 
ethical or economic value is present in the particular judg- 
ment of sense-perception also. The object about which I 
can assure myself by an immediate appeal to other persons 
is the object in its bare "conceptual" aspects — the object 
as a dictionary might define it, the commodity as it might 
be described in a trade catalogue, or the ethical act as defined 
by the criminal code or in the treatise of a moral philoso- 
pher. It is an object consisting of a central core or fixed 
deposit of meaning, which renders it significant in a certain 
general way to a number of persons, or even to all men, but 
which is not yet adequately known by me from the stand- 
point of my present forming purpose. In virtue of these 
conceptual characters it is adaptable to my purpose, which is 
as yet general and indeterminate; but in the nature of the 
case it cannot yet be known to me as applicable to my 
prospective concrete purpose, as this shall come to be 
through judgment. 

Thus, if the test of objectivity of import is to be that the 
judgment shall present an object or a fact which, as pre- 
sented, is socially current among men and not shut away in 



320 Studies in Logical Theory 

the individual intelligence apart from the possibility of social 
verification, then the apparent nominalism of the objection 
we are considering turns out to be the uttermost extreme of 
realism. Such a test amounts to a virtual affirmation that 
the sole objective reality is the conceptual, and that the 
"accidents" of one's particular object of sense-perception are 
the arbitrary play of private preference or fancy. At this 
point, however, the objection may shift its ground and take 
refuge in some such position as the following: The real 
object is indeed the object which the individual knows in 
relation to his particular purpose, and it is indeed impossible 
that the individual's judgment should be limited in its con- 
tent to coincidence with the conceptual elements of meaning 
which are socially current. The building-stone which one has 
judged precisely fit for a special purpose, the specimen which 
the mineralogist or the botanist examines under his micro- 
scope, the tool whose peculiarity of working one has learned 
to make allowance for in use — these all are, of course, 
highly individual objects, possessing for the person in ques- 
tion an indefinite number of objective aspects of which no 
other person can possibly be conscious at the time. And, 
more than this, even though the individual may, in his scru- 
tiny of the object, have discovered no conspicuous new quali- 
ties in it which were not present in the socially current 
meaning, the object will still possess an individuality making 
it genuinely unique merely through its co-ordination with 
other objects in the mechanical process of working out the 
purpose in hand. It is at least an object standing here at 
just this time, a tool cutting this particular piece of stone 
and striking at this instant with this particular ringing 
sound, and these perhaps wholly nonessential facts will 
nevertheless serve to individualize the object (if one chances 
to think of them) in the sense of making it such a one as 
no other person knows. All this may be granted, the objec- 



Valuation as a Logical Process 321 

tion may allow, and yet the vital point remains; for this is 
not what it was intended, even in the first place, to deny. 
The vital point at issue is not whether the object which I 
know is known as I know it by any other person, but 
whether, in the nature of things, it is one that can be so 
known. 

Herein, then, lies the difference between judgments of 
fact and judgments of value. The mineralogist can train 
his pupil to see precisely what he himself sees ; and so like- 
wise in any case of sense-perception, the object, however 
recondite may be the qualities or features which one may see 
in it, can nevertheless be seen by any other person in pre- 
cisely the same way on the single, more often not insuper- 
ably difficult, condition that the discoverer shall point these 
out or otherwise prepare the other for seeing them. But 
with the ton of coal which one may judge economically dis- 
posable for a charitable purpose the case stands differently, 
since it is not in its visible or other physical aspects that the 
ton of coal is here the subject of the judgment. It is as 
having been set apart by oneself exclusively for other uses 
that the ton of coal now functions as an object and now 
possesses the character which the economic judgment has 
given it ; and the case stands similarly with a contemplated 
act, of telling the truth in a trying situation. The valuation 
placed upon the commodity or upon the moral act depends 
essentially upon psychological conditions of temperament, 
disposition, mood, or whim into which it would be impos- 
sible for another person to enter, and these depend upon 
conditions of past training and native endowment which can 
never occur or be combined in future in precisely the same 
way for any other individual. In short, the physical object 
is describable and can be made socially current, though 
doubtless with more or less of difficulty, if other persons 
will attend to it and learn to see it as I see it; but the value 



322 Studies in Logical Theory 

of an economic object or a moral act depends upon my 
desires and feelings, and therefore must remain a matter of 
my private appreciation. 

In answering this amended form of the objection it is 
entirely unnecessary to discuss the issue of fact which it has 
raised as to whether or not complete description of a physical 
object or event is a practical or theoretical possibility. It need 
only be pointed out that at best such complete description can 
only be successful in its purpose on condition that the individ- 
ual upon whom the experiment is tried be willing to attend 
and have the requisite "apperceptive background." The 
accuracy with which another person's knowledge shall copy 
the knowledge which I endeavor to impart to him must mani- 
festly depend upon these two leading conditions, not to men- 
tion also the measure of my own pedagogical and literary skill. 
Any consideration of such a purely psychological problem 
as is here suggested would be entirely out of place in a dis- 
cussion the purpose of which is not that of analyzing the pro- 
cess of judgment, but that of interpreting its meaning aspects. 
Let us grant the entire psychological possibility of making 
socially current in the manner here suggested the most 
highly individual and concrete cognition of an object one 
may please, and let us grant, moreover, that this possibility 
has been actually realized. This concurrent testimony of 
the witness will doubtless confirm one's impression of the 
accuracy of the process of observation and inference whereby 
the knowledge which has been imparted was first gained, 
but we must deny that it can do more than this. For indeed, 
apart from some independent self-reliant conviction of the 
objective validity of the knowledge in question, how should 
another's assent be taken as confirmation and not rather as 
evidence of one's own mere skill in suggestion and of the 
other's susceptibility thereto? We must deny that even in 
the improved form the criterion of social currency is a valid 



Valuation as a Logical Process 323 

one. In a word, the social currency of knowledge to the 
extent to which it can exist requires as its condition, and is 
evidence of, the equal social currency of certain interests, 
purposes, or points of view for predication ; and if it be 
possible to make socially current an item of concrete knowl- 
edge, with all its concrete fulness of detail, then a fortiori it 
must be possible to make socially current the concrete individ- 
ual purpose with reference to which this item of knowledge 
first of all tookform. Whether such a thing be psychologi- 
cally possible at all the reader may decide; but if it be 
possible in the sphere of knowledge of fact, then it must be 
possible in the sphere of valuation. In short, judgment 
in either field, in definition of a certain object or commodity 
or moral act as, for the agent, an objective fact possessing 
certain characters, involves the tacit assumption of social 
verifiability as a matter of course ; but it does not rest upon 
this assumption, nor is this assumption the essence of its 
meaning. To say that my judgment is socially verifiable, 
that my concrete object of perception or of valuation would 
be seen as I see it by any person in precisely my place, is 
merely a tautological way of formally announcing that I 
have made the judgment and have now a definite object 
which to me has a certain definite functional meaning. 

Thus, instead of drawing a distinction between the 
realms of fact and value, as between what is or can be com- 
mon to all intelligent beings and what must be unique for 
each individual one, we must hold that the two realms are 
coextensive. The socially current object answers to a cer- 
tain general type of conscious purpose or interest active in 
the individual and so to a general habit of valuation, and 
the concrete object to a special determination of this type of 
purpose with reference to others in the recognized working 
system of life. The agent's final attitude, on the conclusion 
of the judgment-process, may be expressed in either sort of 



324 Studies in Logical Theory 

judgment — in a judgment of the value of commodity or moral 
purpose, or in a judgment of concrete fact setting forth the 
"external" conditions which warrant the purpose to the 
"energetic" self. Throughout the judgment-process there 
is a correlation between the movement whereby the socially 
current object develops into the adapted means and that 
whereby the socially current type of conduct develops into 
the denned and valued purpose. 1 

At this point, however, a second general objection pre- 
sents itself. However individual the content of my knowl- 
edge of physical fact may be, and however irrelevant, from 
the logical point of view, to my confidence in its objective 
validity may be the possibility of sharing it with other per- 
sons, nevertheless it refers to an object which is in some 
sense permanent, and therein differs from my valuations. In 
economic valuation I reach a definition of a certain com- 
modity and am confirmed in it by all the conditions that 
enter into my final survey of the situation. But my desire 
for the new sort of consumption may fail, and so expose my 
valuation to easy attack from any new desire that may arise ; 
or my supply of the commodity in question may be suddenly 
increased or diminished, and my valuation of the unit quan- 
tity thereby changed. Likewise my ethical valuation may 
have to be reversed (as Mr. Taylor has insisted) by reason 
of a change of disposition or particular desire which makes 
impossible, except in obedience to some other and inclusive 
valuation, further adherence to it. And these changes take 
place without any accompanying sense of their doing violence 
to objective fact or, on the other hand, any judgment of their 

1 The essential dependence of factual judgment upon the rise of economic and 
ethical conflict is implied in the widely current doctrine of the teleological character 
of knowledge. It is indeed nowadays something like a commonplace to say in one 
sense or another that knowledge is relative to ends, but it is not always recognized by 
those who hold this view that an end never appears as such in consciousness alone. 
The end that guides in the construction of factual knowledge is an end in ethical or 
economic conflict with some other likewise indeterminate end in the manner above 
discussed. 



Valuation as a Logical Process 325 

being in the nature of corrections of previous errors in valua- 
tion, and so more closely in accordance with the truth. 
Moreover, a new valuation, taking the place of an old, does 
not supplement its predecessor as one set of judgments 
about a physical object may supplement another, made from 
a different point of view, but does literally take its place, 
and this without necessarily condemning it as having been 
erroneous. 

This general objection rests upon a number of fairly 
obvious misconceptions, and its strength is apparent only. 
In the first place, the question of the objectivity of any type 
of judgment must in the end, as we have seen, reduce itself to 
a question of the judgment's import to the agent. How- 
ever the agent's valuations may shift from time to time, 
each several one will be sanctioned to the agent by the 
changed conditions exhibited in the inventory which the 
agent takes at the close of judgment which has formed it. 
The conditions have changed, and the valuation of the 
earlier purpose has likewise changed; but the new purpose 
is sanctioned by the new conditions, and the test of the pre- 
sumed validity of the new valuation can only be in the 
manner already discussed 1 the test of actual execution of 
the purpose. In the change, as the agent interprets the 
situation, there is no violation of the former purpose nor a 
nearer approach to truth. Each valuation is true for the 
situation to which it corresponds. We are obviously not 
here considering the case of error. An error in valuation 
is evidenced to the agent, not by the need of a new valua- 
tion answering to changed conditions, but by the failure of 
a given valuation to make good its promise, although to all 
appearance conditions have remained unchanged. If the 
conditions have changed, then the purpose and the condi- 
tions must be redetermined, if the expansion of the "ener- 

i See above, pp. 282, 283. 



326 Studies in Logical Theoby 

getic" self is to continue; but the former valuation does not 
thereby become untrue. 

These brief remarks should suffice by way of answer, but 
it will serve advantageously to illustrate our general position 
if we pursue the objection somewhat farther. The physical 
object is, nevertheless, permanent, it will be said, and this 
surely distinguishes it from the object (now freely acknowl- 
edged as such) of the value -judgment. To one man gold 
may be soluble in aqua regia and to another worth so 
many pence an ounce, but different and individual as are 
these judgments and the standpoints they respectively imply, 
the gold is one, impartially admitting at the same time of 
both characterizations. On the other hand, one cannot 
judge an act good and bad at once. The purpose of decep- 
tion that may be good is one controlled and shaped by ideals 
quite different from those which permit deception of the evil 
sort — is, in truth, taken as a total act, altogether different 
from the purpose of deception which one condemns, and not, 
like the "parcel of matter" in the two judgments about 
gold, the subject of both valuations. 

A brief consideration of the meaning of this "parcel of 
matter" will easily expose the weakness of the plea. In the 
last analysis the "parcel of matter" must for the agent 
reduce itself, let us say, to certain controllable energies cen- 
tering about certain closely contiguous points in space and 
capable, in their exercise, of setting free or checking other 
energies in the system of nature. Thus, put in aqua regia 
the gold will dissolve, but in the atmosphere it retains its 
brilliant color, and in the photographer's solution its ener- 
gies have still a different mode of manifestation. And thus 
it would appear that the various predicates which are applied 
to "gold" imply, each one, a unique set of conditions. Gold 
is soluble in aqua regia, but not if it is to retain its yellow 
luster; which predicate is to be true of it depends upon the 



Valuation as a Logical Process 327 

conditions under which the energies "resident in the gold" 
are to be set free, just as the moral character of an act 
depends upon the social conditions obtaining at the time of 
its performance — that is, upon the ideals with reference to 
which it has been shaped in judgment. How can one 
maintain that in a literal and concrete physical sense gold 
in process of solution is the "same" as gold entering into 
chemical combination? Surely the energy conditions which 
constitute the "gold" in the two processes are not the 
same — and can one nowadays hope to rind sameness in 
unchangeable atoms? 1 

In a word, the permanent substance or "real essence" 
that admits of various mutually supplementary determina- 
tions corresponding to diverse points of view is, strictly 
speaking, a convenient abstraction, and not an existent fact 
in time — and we shall maintain that the same species of 
abstraction has its proper place, and in fact occurs, in the 
sphere of moral judgment. The type of moral conduct that 
in every actual case of its occurrence in the moral order is 
determined in some unique and special way by relation to 
other standards is precisely analogous to the " substance " 
that is now dissolved in aqua regia and now made to pass in 
the form of current coin, but cannot be treated in both ways 
at once. Both are abstractions. The "gold" is a name for 
the general possibility of attaining any one of a certain 
set of particular ends by appropriately co-ordinating cer- 
tain energies, resident elsewhere in the physical system, 
with those at present stored in this particular "parcel of 
matter;" the result to be attained depends not alone upon 
the "parcel of matter," but also upon the particular energies 
brought to bear upon it from without. Now let us take a 
type of conduct which is sometimes judged good and some- 
times bad Deception, for example, is such a type — and 

1 Cf. Schillee, Riddles of the Sphinx, chap, vii, §§ 10-14. 



328 Studies in Logical Theory 

as a type it simply stands for the general possibility of 
furtherance or detriment to the "energetic" self according 
as it is determined in the concrete instance by ideals of 
social well-being or by considerations of immediate personal 
advantage. 

For the type-form of conduct — when considered, not as 
a type of mere physical performance, but as conduct in the 
technical sense of a possible purpose of the self — is, in 
the sense we have explained, a symbol for the general pos- 
sibility of access or dissipation of spiritual energy — energy 
which must be set free by the bringing to bear of other 
energies upon it, and which furthers or works counter to the 
enlargement and development of the self according to the 
mode of its co-ordination with other energies which the self 
has already turned to its purposes. 1 But actual conduct is 
concrete always and never typical; and so likewise, we have 
sought to show, actual "substance," the objective thing 
referred to in the factual judgment, is always concrete and 
never an essence. It is not a fixed thing admitting of a simul- 
taneous variety of conflicting determinations and practical 
uses, but absolutely unique and already determined to its 
unique character by the whole assemblage of physical con- 
ditions which affect it at the time and which it in turn 
reacts upon. In the moral as in the physical sphere the 
fundamental category would, on our present account, appear 
to be that of energy. The particular physical object given 
in judgment is a concrete realization, in the form of a par- 
ticular means or instrument, of that general possibility of 
attaining ends which the concept of a fixed fund of energy, 
interpreted as a logical postulate or principle of inference, 
expresses. The particular moral or economic act is a par- 
ticular way in which the energy of the self may be increased 

!It would appear that the principle of the conservation of energy is valid only 
in the physical sphere; but the logical significance of this limitation cannot be 
here discussed. 



Valuation as a Logical Process 329 

or diminished. In both spheres the reality presented in the 
finished judgment is objective as being a stimulus to the 
setting free of the energies for which it stands. Once 
more, then, our answer to the objection we have been con- 
sidering must be that the object as the permanent sub- 
strate is merely an abstract symbol standing for the inde- 
terminate means in general set over against the self. Cor- 
responding to it we have, on the other side, the concept of 
the "energetic" self — the self that is purposive in gen- 
eral, expansive somehow or other. 

The function of completed factual judgment in the 
development of experience is, we have held, that of warrant- 
ing to the agent the completed purpose which his judgment 
of value expresses. This view calls for some further comment 
and illustration in closing the present division. In the first 
place the statement implies that the conditions which factual 
judgment presents in the "final survey" as sanctioning the 
purpose have not determined the purpose, since prior to the 
determination of the purpose the conditions were not, and 
could not be, so presented. The question, therefore, natur- 
ally arises whether our meaning is that in the formation of 
our purposes in valuation the recognition of existing con- 
ditions plays no part. Our answer can be indicated only in 
the barest outline as follows: 

The agent must, of course, in an economic judgment-pro- 
cess, recognize and take account of such facts as the tech- 
nical adaptability of the means he is proposing to use to the 
new purpose that is forming, as also of environing con- 
ditions which may affect the success which he may meet 
with in applying them. He must consider also his own 
physical strength and qualities of mind with a view to this 
same technical problem. And similarly in ethical valuation, 
as we have seen, the psychology of the "empirical ego" 



330 Studies in Logical Theory 

must play its part. But the conditions thus recognized are, 
as we might seek to show more in detail, explainable as the 
outcome of past factual judgment-processes, and on the 
occasion of their original definition in the form in which 
they now are known played the sanctioning part of which 
we have so often spoken. They therefore correspond to the 
agent's accepted practical ideals, so that the control which 
his past experience exercises over his present conduct may 
be stated equally well in either sort of terms — in terms of 
his prevailing recognized standards, or in terms of his 
present knowledge of the conditions which his new purpose 
must respect. Thus, in general, the concept of a physical 
order conditioning the conduct of all men and presented in a 
definite body of socially current knowledge is the logical 
correlate of the moral law conceived as a categorical imper- 
ative prescribing certain types of conduct. 

Thus the error of regarding the agent's conduct in a 
present emergency as an outcome of existing determining 
conditions is logically identical with the corresponding error 
of the ethical theory of self-realization. The latter holds 
the logical possibility of a determinate descriptive ideal 
(already realized in the unchanging Absolute Self) which is 
adequate to the solution of all possible ethical problems. 
The former holds that all conduct must be subject to the 
determining force of external conditions which, if not at 
present completely known, are at least in theory knowable. 
The physical universe in its original nebulous state con- 
tained the "promise and potency" of all that has been in the 
way of human conduct and of all that is to be. Into the 
fixed mechanical system no new energy can enter and from 
it none of the original fund of energy can be lost. This 
mechanical theory of conduct is the essential basis of the 
hedonistic theory of ethics; and it would not be difficult 
to show that Green's criticism of this latter and his 



Valuation as a Logical Process 331 

own affirmative theory of the moral ideal (as also the cur- 
rent conventional criticism of hedonism in the same tenor 
by the school of Green) are in a logical sense identical 
with it. For the assumption that conduct is determined 
by existing objective conditions is precisely the logical cor- 
relate of the concept of a contentual and "realizable 1 ' ideal 
moral self. 1 

We may now interpret, in the light of our general view 
of the function of factual judgment, the concept of the 
"empirical self" referred to in our discussion of the various 
types of sanctioning condition which may enter into the 
"final survey." The "empirical self" of psychological sci- 
ence is a construction gradually put together by psycholo- 
gist or introspective layman as an interpretation of the way 
in which accepted concrete modes of conduct, in the deter- 
mination of which standards have been operative, have 
worked out in practice to the furtherance or impoverishment 
of the "energetic" self. We have seen that the ambiguous 
presented self which functions in the moral attitude of obe- 
dience to authority or to conscience gives place in the atti- 
tude of conscious valuation to apprehension of the "energetic" 
self, on the one hand, and descriptive concepts of particular 
types of conduct, on the other. The "empirical self" at the 
same time makes its appearance as a constantly expanding 
inventory of the "spiritual resources" which the "energetic" 
self has at its disposal. These are the functions of the soul 
which a functional psychology shows us in operation — powers 
of attention, strength of memory, fertility in associative 
recall, and the like — and these are the resources where- 
with the "energetic" self may execute, and so exploit to its 

1 That the assumption mentioned is the essential basis of the twin theories of 
associationism in psychology and hedonism in ethics is shown by De. Waenek Fite 
in his article, "The Associational Conception of Experience," Philosophical Review, 
Vol. IX, pp. 283 S. Cf. Me. Bradley's remarks on the logic of hedonism in his 
Principles of Logic, pp. 244-9. 



332 Studies in Logical Theory 

own furtherance, the purposes which, in particular emer- 
gencies, new end and recognized standards may work out 

in co-operation. 1 

VI 

In the foregoing pages we have consistently used the 
expressions "ethical and economic judgment" and "judg- 
ment of valuation" as synonymous. This may have seemed 
to the reader something very like a begging of the question 
from the outset, as taking for granted that very judgmental 
character of our valuational experience which it was the 
professed object of our discussion to establish. We are thus 
called upon very briefly to consider, first of all, the relations 
which subsist between the consciousness of value and the 
process which we have described as that of valuation. This 
will enable us, in the second place, to determine the logical 
function which belongs to the consciousness of value in the 
general economy of life. The consciousness of value is a 
perfectly definite and distinctive psychical fact mediated by 
a doubtless highly complex set of psychical or ultimately 
physiological conditions. As such it admits of descriptive 
analysis, and in a complete theory of value such descriptive 
analysis should certainly find a place. It would doubtless 

i The " energetic " self is apparently Mr. Bradley's fourth " meaning of self, 1 ' 
the self as monad — " something moving parallel with the life of a man, or, rather, 
something not moving, but literally standing in relation to his successive variety " 
(Appearance and Reality [1st ed.] p. 86, in chap, ix, "The Meanings of the Self"). 
Mr. Bradley's difficulty appears to come from his desiring a psychological content for 
what is essentially a logical conception — a confusion (if we may be permitted the 
remark) which runs through the entire chapter to which we refer and is responsible 
for the undeniable and hopeless incoherency of the various meanings of the self, as 
Mr. Bradley therein expounds them. " If the monad stands aloof," says Mr. Bradley, 
"either with no character at all or a private character apart, then it may be a fine 
thing in itself, but it is a mere mockery to call it the self of a man " (p. 87). Surely 
this is to misconstrue and then find fault with that very character of essential logical 
apartness from any possibility of determination in point of descriptive psychological 
content which constitutes the whole value of the " energetic " self as a logical con- 
ception stimulative of the valuation -process and so inevitably of factual judgment. 
See pp. 258, 259, above. The reader may find for himself in Mr. Bradley's enumera- 
tion of meanings our concept of the empirical self. But surely the " energetic " and 
empirical selves would appear on our showing to have no necessary conflict with 
each other. 



Valuation as a Logical Process 333 

throw much light upon the origin of valuation as a process, 
and of valuing as an attitude, and admirably illustrate the 
view of the function of the consciousness of value to which 
a logical study of valuation as a process seems to lead us. 
This problem in analysis belongs, however, to psychology, 
and therefore lies apart from our present purpose ; nor is it 
necessary to the establishment of our present view to under- 
take it, It is necessary for our purpose only to suggest, for 
purposes of identification, a brief description of the value- 
consciousness, and to indicate its place in the process of 
reflective thought. 

The consciousness of value may best be described, by 
way of first approximation, in the language of the Austrian 
economists as a sense of the "importance" to oneself of a 
commodity or defined moral purpose. It belongs to the 
agent's attitude of survey or recapitulation which ensues 
upon the completion of the judgment -process and is mediated 
by attention to the ethical or economic object in its newly 
defined character of specific conduciveness to the well-being 
of the self. The commodity, in virtue of its ascertained 
physical properties, is adapted to certain modes of use or 
consumption which, through valuation of the commodity, 
have come to be accepted as desirable. The moral act 
likewise has been approved by virtue of its having certain 
definite sociological tendencies, or being conducive to the 
welfare and happiness of a friend. Thus commodity or 
moral act, as the case may be, has a determinate complexity 
of meaning which has been judged as, in one sense, expan- 
sive of the self, and the value-consciousness we may identify 
as that sense of the valued object's importance which is 
mediated by recognition of it as the bearer of this complexity 
of concrete meaning. The meaning is, as we may say, 
"condensed" or "compacted" into the object as given in 
sense-perception, and because the meaning stands for ex- 



334 Studies in Logical Theory 

pansion of the self, the object in taking it up into itself 
receives the character of importance as a valued object. 

The sense of importance thus is expressive of an attitude 
upon the agent's part. The concrete meanings which make 
up the content of the object's importance would inevitably, 
if left to themselves, prompt overt action. The commodity 
would forthwith be applied to its new use or the moral act 
would be performed. The self would, as we may express it, 
possess itself of the spiritual energies resident in the chosen 
purpose. The attitude of survey, however, inhibits this action 
of the self and the sense of importance is the resulting emo- 
tional apprehension of the value of the object hereby brought 
to recognition. Now, it should be carefully observed that the 
particular concrete emotions appropriate to the details of 
the valued purpose are not what we here intend. The pur- 
pose may spring from some impulse of self-interest, hatred, 
patriotism, or love, and the psychical material of its pres- 
entation during the agent's survey will be the varied complex 
of qualitative emotion that comes from inhibition of the 
detailed activities which make up the purpose as a whole. 
So also the apprehension of the physical object of economic 
valuation is largely, if not altogether, emotional in its psychi- 
cal constitution. Psychologically these emotions are the 
purpose — they are the "stuff" of which the purpose as a 
psychical fact occurring in time is made. But we must bear 
in mind that it is not the purpose as a psychical fact that is 
the object of the agent's valuing — any more than is the tool 
with which one cuts perceived as a molecular mass or as an 
aggregation of centers of ether-stress. As a cognized object of 
value the purpose is, in our schematic terminology, a source of 
energy for the increase of the self, and thus the conscious- 
ness of value is the perfectly specific emotion arising from 
restraint put upon the self in its movement of appropriation 
of this energy. In contrast with the concrete emotions which 



Valuation as a Logical Process 335 

are the substance of the purpose as presented, the conscious- 
ness of value may be called a "formal" emotion or the emotion 
of a typical reflective attitude. 

The valuing attitude we may then describe as that of 
"resolution" on the part of the self to adhere to the finished 
purpose which it now surveys, with a view to exploitation of 
the purpose. The connection between the valuation -pro- 
cess and the consciousness of value may be stated thus : The 
valuation -process works out (and necessarily in cognitive, 
objective terms) the purpose which is valued in the agent's 
survey. But this development of the purpose is at the same 
time determination of the "energetic" self to acceptance of 
the purpose that shall be worked out. Thus the valuation- 
process is the source of the consciousness of value in the 
twofold way (1) of defining the object valued, and (2) of 
determining the self to the attitude of resolution to adhere 
to it and exploit it. 1 The consciousness of value is the appre- 
hension of an object in its complete functional character as 
a factor in experience. 

The function of the consciousness of value must now be 
very briefly considered. The phenomenon is a striking one, 
and apparently, as the economists especially have insisted, of 
much practical importance in the conduct of life. 2 And yet on 
our account of the phenomenon, as it may appear, the prob- 
lem of assigning to it a function must be, to say the least, 
difficult. For the consciousness of value is, we have held, 
emotional, and, on the conception of emotion in general which 
we have taken for granted throughout our present discussion, 
this mode of being conscious is merely a reflex of a state of 
tension in activity. As such it merely reports in conscious- 
ness a process of motor co-ordination already going on and in 
the nature of the case can contribute nothing to the outcome. 

i In the first of these inseparable aspects valuation is determinative of Right- 
ness and Wrongness; in the second it presents the object as Good or Bad. See p. 259, 
above. 

2 See, for example, Wiesee, Natural Value (Eng. trans.), p. 17. 



336 Studies in Logical Theoky 

Now if it were in a direct way as immediately felt emotion 
that the consciousness of value must be functional if func- 
tional at all, then the problem might well be given up; but 
it would be a serious blunder to conceive the problem in 
this strictly psychological way. A logical statement of the 
problem would raise a different issue — not the question of 
whether emotion as emotion can in any sense be functional 
in experience, but whether the consciousness of value and 
emotion in general may not receive reflective interpretation 
and thereby, becoming objective, play a part as a factor in 
subsequent valuation- processes. Indeed, the psychological 
statement of the problem misses the entire point at issue 
and leads directly to the wholly irrelevant general problem of 
whether any mode of consciousness whatever can, as con- 
sciousness, put forth energy and be a factor in controlling 
conduct. The present problem is properly a logical one. 
What is the agent's apprehension of the matter? In his 
subsequent reflective processes of valuation does the con- 
sciousness of value, which was a feature of the survey on a 
past occasion, receive recognition in any way and so play a 
part? This is simply a question of fact and clearly, as a 
question relating to the logical content of the agent's re- 
flective process, has no connection with or interest in the 
problem of a possible dynamic efficacy of consciousness as 
such. The question properly is logical, not psychological or 
metaphysical. 

Thus stated, then, the problem seems to admit of answer 
— and along the line already suggested in our account of 
economic valuation. 1 Recognition of the fact that the con- 
sciousness of value was experienced in the survey of a certain 
purpose on an earlier occasion confirms this purpose, holding 
the means, in an economic situation, to their appointed use 
and strengthening adherence to the standard in the ethical 

i See pp. 307-12 above. 



Valuation as a Logical Process 337 

case. This recognition serves as stimulus to a reproduction, 
in memory, of the cognitive details of the earlier survey, 
and so in the ideal case to a more or less complete and 
recognizably adequate reinstatement of the earlier valuing 
attitude, and so to a reinstatement of the consciousness of 
value itself. The result is a strengthening of the established 
valuation, a more efficacious control of the new end claiming 
recognition, and an assured measure of continuity of ethical 
development from the old valuation to the new. The function 
thus assigned to the consciousness of value finds abundant 
illustration elsewhere in the field of emotion. The stated 
festivals of antiquity commemorative of regularly recurrent 
phases of agricultural and pastoral life, as also the festivals 
in observance of signal events in the private and political 
life of the individual, would appear to find, more or less dis- 
tinctly, here their explanation. These festivals must have 
been prompted by a more or less conscious recognition of the 
social value inherent in the important functions making up 
the life of the community, and of the individual citizen as a 
member of the community and as an individual. They 
secured the end of a sustained and enhanced interest in 
these normal functions by effecting, through a symbolic 
reproduction of these, an intensified and glorified experience 
of the emotional meaning normally and inherently belonging 
to them. 1 In the same way the rites of the religious cults of 
Greece, not to mention kindred phenomena so abundantly to 
be found in lower civilizations as well as in our own, served 
.to fortify the individual in a certain consistent and salutary 
course of institutional and private life. 2 

1 The illustration, as also the general principle which it here is used to illus- 
trate, was suggested some years since by Professor G. H. Mead in a lecture course on 
the " History of Psychology," which the writer had the advantage of attending. 

2 The conservative function of valuation may be further illustrated by reference 
to the well-known principle of marginal utility of which we have already made men- 
tion (p. 307 above), and which has played so great a part in modern economic 
theory. The value of the unit quantity of a stock of any commodity is, according to 



338 Studies in Logical Theoky 

It has been taken for granted throughout that there are 
but two forms of valuation -process, the ethical and the eco- 
nomic. The reason for this limitation may already be suffi- 
ciently apparent, but it will further illustrate our general 
conception of the valuation -process briefly to indicate it in 
detail. What shall be said, for example, of the common use 
of the term "value" in such expressions as the "value of 
life," the "emotional value" of an object or a moral act, the 
"natural value" of a type of impulsive activity? In these 
uses of the word the reference is apparently to one's own 
incommunicable inner experience of living, of perception of 
the object, or of the impulse, which cannot be suggested to 
any other person who has not himself had the experience. 
My pleasure, my color- sensation in its affective aspect, my 
emotion, are inner and subjective, and I distinguish them by 
such expressions as the above from the visible, tangible object 
to which I ascribe them as constituting its immediate or 
natural value to me. This broader use of the term "value" 
has not found recognition in the foregoing pages, and it 
requires here a word of comment. So long as these phases 
of the experience of the object are not recognized as separable 
in thought from the object viewed as an external condition 
or means, they would apparently be better characterized in 
some other way. If, however, they are so recognized, and are 
thereby taken as determinative of the agent's practical atti- 
tude toward the thing, we have merely our typical situation 
of ethical valuation of some implied purpose as conducive to 
the self and economic valuation of the means as requisites for 

this principle, measured by the least important single use in the schedule of uses to 
which the stock as a whole is to be applied. Manifestly, then, adherence to this 
valuation placed upon the unit quantity is in so far conservative of the whole sched- 
ule and the marginal value is a " short-hand " symbol expressive of the value of the 
whole complex purpose presented in the schedule. Moreover, the increase of mar- 
ginal value concurrently with diminution of the stock through consumption, loss, 
or reapplication is not indicative so much of a change of purpose as of determina- 
tion to adhere to so much of the original program of consumption as may still be 
possible of attainment with the depleted supply of the commodity. 



Valuation as a Logical Process 339 

execution of the purpose. Our general criterion for the pro- 
priety of terming any mode of consciousness the value of an 
object must be that it shall perform a logical function and 
not simply be referred to in its aspect of psychical fact. 
The feeling or emotion, or whatever the mode of conscious- 
ness in question may be, must play the recognized part, in 
the agent's survey of the situation, of prompting and sup- 
porting a definite practical attitude with reference to the 
object. . If, in short, the experience in question enters in 
any way into a conscious purpose of the agent, it may properly 
be termed a value. 1 

^Esthetic value also has not been recognized, and for the 
opposite reason. The sense of beauty would appear to be a 
correlate of relatively perfect attained adjustment between 
the agent and his natural environment or the conditions sug- 
gested more or less impressively by the work of art. There 
must, indeed, be present in the aesthetic experience an element 
of unsatisfied curiosity sufficient to stimulate an interest in 
the changing or diverse aspects of the beautiful object, but 
this must not be sufficient to prompt reflective judgment of 
the details presented. On the whole, the aesthetic experience 
would appear to be essentially post-judgmental and appre- 
ciative. It comes on the particular occasion, not as the 
result of a judgment-process of the valuational type, but as an 
immediate appreciation. As an immediate appreciation it 
has no logical function and on our principles must be denied 
the name of value. Our standpoint must be that of the 
experiencing individual. The aesthetic experience as a type 
may well be a development out of the artistic and so find 

i Thus except on this condition we should deny the propriety of speaking of the 
value of a friend or of a memento or sacred relic. The purpose of accurate definition 
of the function of such objects as these in the attainment of one's ends is foreign to 
the proper attitude of loving, prizing, or venerating them. We may ethically value 
the act of sacrifice for a friend or of solicitous care of the memento,but the object of 
our sacrifice or solicitude has simply the direct or immediate "qualitative " emotional 
character appropriate to the kinds of activity to which it is the adequate stimulus. 



340 Studies in Logical Theoky 



its ultimate explanation in the psychology of man's 
primitive technological occupations in the ordinary course of 
life. It is, as we have said, of the post- judgmental type, 
and so may very probably be but the cumulative outcome 
of closer and closer approximations along certain lines to a 
perfected adjustment with the conditions of life. It may 
thus have its origin in past processes of the reflective valua- 
tional type. Nevertheless, viewed in the light of its actual 
present character and status in experience, the aesthetic must 
be excluded from the sphere of values. 

Thus the realms of fact and value are both real, but that 
of value is logically prior and so the "more real." The 
realm of fact is that of conditions warranting the purposes of 
the self; as a separate order, complete and absolute in 
itself, it is an abstraction that has forgotten the reason for 
which it was made. Reality in the logical sense is that 
which furthers the development of the self. The purpose 
that falls short of its promise in this regard is unreal — not, 
indeed, in the psychological sense that it never existed in 
imagination, but in the logical sense that it is no longer 
valued. Within the inclusive realm of reality the realm of 
fact is that of the means which serve the concrete purposes 
which the self accepts. The completed purpose, however, 
is not means, since still behind and beyond it there can be 
no other concrete valued purpose which it can serve. Nor 
is it an ultimate end, since in its character of accepted and 
valued end the self adheres to it, and it therefore cannot 
express the whole purpose of the self to whose unspecifiable 
fulness and increase of activity it is but a temporary proba- 
tional contributor. It is rather in the nature of a for- 
mula or method of behavior to which the self ascribes reality 
by recognizing and accepting it as its own. 



XI 

SOME LOGICAL ASPECTS OP PURPOSE 
INTRODUCTORY 

Whenever and wherever it was discovered that the con- 
tent of experience as given in immediate perception could 
be reconstructed through ideas, then and there began to 
emerge such questions as these: What is the significance of 
this reconstructive power? What is the relation between it 
and the immediate experience? What is the relative value 
of each in experience as a whole ? What is their relation to 
truth and error? If thinking leads to truth, and thought 
must yet get its material from perception, how then shall 
the product of thought escape infection from the material? 
On the other hand, if truth is to be found in the immediate 
experience, can it here be preserved from the blighting effects 
of thought ? For so insistent and pervasive is this activity of 
thought that it appears to penetrate into the sanctum of 
perception itself. Turning to a third possibility, if it 
should be found that truth and error are concerned with 
both — that they are products of the combined activity of 
perception and reflection — then just what does each do? 
And what in their operations marks the difference between 
truth and error ? Or still again, if truth and error cannot 
be found in the operations of perception and reflection as 
such, then they must be located in the relation of these 
processes to something else. If so, what is this something 
else? Out of such questions as these is logic born. 

There may be those who will object to some of these 
questions as "logical" problems — those who would limit 

341 



342 Studies in Logical Theoey 

logic to a description of the forms and processes of recon- 
struction, relegating the question of the criterion of truth 
and error to "epistemology." This objection we must here 
dismiss summarily by saying that, by whatever name it is 
called, a treatment of the forms and processes of thought 
must deal with the criterion of truth and error, since these 
different "forms" are just those which thought assumes in 
attempting to reach truth under different conditions. 

Certainly in the beginning the Greeks regarded their 
newly discovered power of thought as anything but formal. 
Indeed, it soon became so "substantial " that it was regarded 
as simply a new world of fact, of existence alongside of, or 
rather above, the world of perception. But Socrates hailed 
ideas as deliverers from the contradictions and paradoxes 
into which experience interpreted in terms of immediate 
sense-perception had fallen. In the concept Socrates 
found a solution for the then pressing problems of social life. 
The Socratic universal is not a mere empty form which 
thought imposes upon the world. It is something which 
thought creates in order that a life of social interaction and 
reciprocity may go on. This need not mean that the Greeks 
were reflectively conscious of this, but that this was the way 
the concept was actually used and developed by Socrates. 

In attempting to formulate the relation between this new 
world of ideas and immediate sense-experience, Plato con- 
structed his scheme of substantiation and participation. The 
Platonic doctrine of substantiation and participation is an 
expression of the conviction that anything so valuable as 
Socrates had shown ideas to be could not be merely formal 
or unreal. Up to the discovery of these ideas reality lay 
in the "substances" of perception. Hence in order to have 
that reality to which their worth, their value in life, entitled 
them, the ideas must be substantiated. 

This introduction of the newly discovered ideas into the 
world of substances and reality wrought, of course, a change 



Some Logical Aspects of Purpose 343 

in the conception of the latter — a change which has well- 
nigh dominated the entire philosophic development ever 
since. Let us recall that the aim of Socrates was to find 
something that would prevent society from going to pieces 
under the influence of the disintegrating conception of ex- 
perience as a mere flux of given immediate content. Now, 
in the concepts Socrates discovered the basis for just this 
much-needed wholeness and stability. Moreover, the fact 
that unity and stability were the actual social needs of the 
hour led not only to the concepts which furnished them 
being conceived as substantial and real, but to their being 
regarded as a higher type of reality, as "more real" than the 
given, immediate experiences of perception. They were 
higher and more real because, just then, they answered the 
pressing social need. 

The ideas supplied this unity because they furnished 
ends, purposes, to the given material of perception. The 
given is now given for something; for something more, 
too, than mere contemplation. Socrates also showed, by 
the most acute analysis, that the content of these ends, 
these purposes, was social through and through. 

From the ethical standpoint this teleological character of 
the idea is clearly recognized. But as "real," the ideas must 
be stated in the metaphysical terms of substance and attri- 
bute. Here the social need is abstracted from and lost to 
sight. The fundamental attributes of the ideas are now a 
metaphysical unity and stability. Hence unity and stability, 
wholeness and completeness, are the very essence of reality, 
while multiplicity and change constitute the nature of appear- 
ance. Thus does Plato's reality become, as Windelband says, 
"an immaterial eleaticism which seeks true being in the 
ideas without troubling itself about the world of generation 
and occurrence which it leaves to perception and opinion." 1 

Now it is the momentum of this conception of reality as 

i History of Philosophy (Tuft's translation), p. 117. 



344 Studies in Logical Theory 

a stable and complete system of absolute ideas, the develop- 
ment of which we have just roughly sketched, that is so 
important historically. Why this conception of reality, 
which apparently grew out of a particular historical situa- 
tion, should have dominated philosophic theory for over two 
thousand years appears at first somewhat puzzling. Those 
who still hold and defend it will of course say that this sur- 
vival is evidence of its validity. But, after all, our human 
world may be yet very young. It may be that "a thousand 
years are but as yesterday." At any rate philosophy has 
never been in a hurry to reconstruct conceptions which 
served their day and generation with such distinction as did 
the Platonic conception of reality. And this is true to the 
evolutionary instinct that experience has only its own prod- 
ucts as material for further construction. On the other 
hand, the principle of evolution with equal force demands 
that only as material, not as final forms of experience, shall 
these products continue. It may be that philosophy has 
not yet taken the conception of evolution quite seriously. 
At all events it is certain that long after it has been found 
that, instead of being eternal and complete, the concept 
undergoes change, that it has simply the stability and whole- 
ness demanded by a particular and concrete situation; after 
it has been discovered, in other words, that the stability and 
wholeness, instead of attaching to the content of an idea, are 
simply the functions of any content used as a purpose — 
after all this has been accepted in psychology, the concep- 
tion of truth and reality which arose under an entirely 
different conception of the nature of thought still survives. 
This change in the conception of the character of the 
ideas, with no corresponding change in the conception of 
reality, marks the divorce of thought and reality and the 
rise of the epistemological problem. Let us recall that 
in Plato the relation between the higher and ultimate 



Some Logical Aspects of Purpose 345 

reality, as constituted by the complete and " Eternal Ideas," 
and the lower reality of perception, is that of arche- 
type and ectype. Perceptions attempt to imitate and copy 
the ideas. Now, when the ideas are found to be changing, 
and when further the interpenetration of perception and con- 
ception is discovered, reality as fixed and complete must be 
located elsewhere. And just as in the old system it was the 
business of perception to imitate the "Eternal Ideas," so here 
it is still assumed that thought is to imitate the reality wher- 
ever now it is to be located. And as regards the matter of 
location, the old conception is not abandoned. The elder 
Plato is mighty yet. Reality must still be a completed 
system of fixed and eternal "things in themselves," "rela- 
tions," or "noumena" of some sort which our ideas, now 
constituted by both perception and conceptional processes, 
are still to "imitate," "copy," "reflect," "represent," or at 
least "symbolize" in some fashion. 

Prom this point on, then, thought has two functions: one, 
to help experience meet and reorganize into itself the results 
of its own past activity ; the other, to reflect or represent in 
some sense the absolute system of reality. For a very long 
time the latter has continued to constitute the logical prob- 
lem, the former being relegated to the realm of psychology. 

But this discovery of the reconstructive function of the 
idea and its assignment to the jurisdiction of psychology did 
not leave logic where it was before, nor did it lighten its 
task. Logic could not shut its eyes to this "psychological" 
character of the idea. 1 Indeed, logic had to take the idea 
as psychology described it, then do the best it could with it 
for its purpose. 

The embarrassment of logic by this reconstructive char- 

i Cf. Professor J. R. Angell's article, "Relations of Structural and Functional 
Psychology to Philosophy," Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago, 
Vol. Ill, pp. 10-12 ; also Philosophical Review, Vol. XII, No. 3. Cf. also Mr. Schil- 
ler's essay on "Axioms as Postulates" in Personal Idealism. 



346 Studies in Logical Theory 

acter of the idea even Aristotle discovered to some extent in 
the relation of the Platonic perceptions to the eternal ideas. 
He found great difficulty in getting a flowing stream of con- 
sciousness to imitate or even symbolize an eternally fixed 
and completed reality. And since we have discovered, in 
addition, that the idea is so palpably a reconstructive activ- 
ity, the difficulties have not diminished. 

In such a situation it could only be a question of time 
until solutions of the problem should be sought by attempt- 
ing to bring together these two functions of the idea. Per- 
haps after all the representation of objects in an absolute 
system is involved in the reconstruction of our experience. 
Or perhaps what appears as reconstructions of our experi- 
ence — as desiring, struggling, deliberating, choosing, will- 
ing, as sorrows and joys, failures and triumphs — are but 
the machinery by which the absolute system is repre- 
sented. At any rate, these two functions surely cannot be 
regarded as belonging to the idea as color and form belong 
to a stone. We should never be satisfied with such a brute 
dualism as this. 

Without any further historical sketch of attempts at this 
synthesis, I desire to pass at once to a consideration of 
what I am sure everyone will agree must stand as one of 
the most brilliant and in every way notable efforts in this 
direction — Mr. Royce's Aberdeen lectures on "The World 
and the Individual." It is the purpose here to examine 
that part of these lectures, and it is the heart of the whole 
matter, in which the key to the solution of the problem 
of the relation between ideas and reality is sought precisely 
in the purposive character of the idea. This will be found 
especially in the "Introduction" and in the chapter on 
"Internal and External Meaning of Ideas." * 

iFrom this point on this paper is an expansion of some paragraphs, pp. 11-13, in 
an article on "Existence, Meaning, and Reality, " printed from Vol. Ill of the First 
Series of the Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago. 



Some Logical Aspects of Purpose 347 

i. the purposive character of ideas 

With his unerring sense for fundamentals, Mr. Royce 
begins by telling us that the first thing called for by the 
problem of the relation of ideas to reality is a discussion of 
the nature of ideas. Here Mr. Royce says he shall "be 
guided by certain psychological analyses of the mere con- 
tents of our consciousness, which have become prominent in 
recent discussion." 1 

Your intelligent ideas of things never consist of mere imagery 
of the thing, but always involve a consciousness of how you pro- 
pose to act toward the thing of which you have ideas Com- 
plex scientific ideas viewed as to their conscious significance are, as 
Professor Stout has well said, plans of action, ways of constructing 

the object of your scientific consciousness By the word idea, 

then, as we shall use it, when, after having criticised opposing 
theory, we come to state in these lectures our own thesis, I shall 
mean in the end any state of consciousness, whether simple or 
complex, which when present is then and there viewed as at least 
a partial expression, or embodiment of a single conscious purpose. 
.... In brief, an idea in my present definition may, and in fact 
always does, if you please, appear to be representative of a fact 
existent beyond itself. But the primary character which makes it 
an idea is not its representative character, is not its vicarious 
assumption of the responsibility of standing for a being beyond 
itself, but is its inner character as relatively fulfilling the purpose, 
that is as presenting the partial fulfilment of the purpose which is 
in the consciousness of the moment wherein the idea takes place. 2 
.... Now this purpose, just in so far as it gets a present con- 
scious embodiment in the contents, and in the form of the complex 
state called the idea, constitutes what I shall hereafter call the 
internal meaning of the idea. 3 .... But ideas often seem to have 
a meaning; yes, as one must add, finite ideas always undertake 
or appear to have a meaning that is not exhausted by this con- 
scious internal meaning presented and relatively fulfilled at the 
moment when the idea is there for our finite view. The melody 
sung, the artists' idea, the thought of your absent friend, a thought 
on which you love to dwell, all these not merely have their obvious 

l P. 22. 2 Pp. 22, 23 ; italics mine. 3 p. 25. 



s 



348 Studies in Logical Theoey 

internal meaning as meeting a conscious purpose by their very 
presence, but also they at least appear to have that other sort of 
meaning, that reference beyond themselves to objects, that cogni- 
tive relation to outer facts, that attempted correspondence with 
outer facts, which many accounts of our ideas regard as their pri- 
mary inexplicable and ultimate character. I call this second, and 
for me still problematic, and derived aspect of the nature of ideas, 
their apparently external meaning. 1 

From all this it is quite evident that Mr. Royce accepts 
and welcomes the results of the work of modern psychology 
on the nature of the idea. The difficulty will come in 
making the connection between these accepted results and 
the Platonic conception of ultimate reality as stated in the 
following : 

To be means simply to express, to embody the complete internal 
meaning of a certain absolute system of ideas. A system, more- 
over, which is genuinely implied in the true internal meaning or 
purpose of every finite idea, however fragmentary. 2 

It may be well to note here in passing that, notwith- 
standing the avowed subordination here of the representative 
to the reconstructive character of the ideas, the former 
becomes very important in the chapter on the relation of 
internal to external meaning, where the problem of truth 
and error is considered. 

In this account of the two meanings of the idea, which I 
have tried to state as nearly as possible in the author's own 
words, there appear some conceptions of idea, of purpose, 
and of their relation to each other, that play an important 
part in the further treatment and in determining the final 
outcome. In the description of the internal meaning there 
appear to be two quite different conceptions of the relation 
of idea to purpose. One regards the idea as itself consti- 
tuting the purpose or plan of action; the other describes the 
idea as "the partial fulfilment" of the purpose. (1) "Complex 

1 P. 26. 2 p. 36 ; italics mine. 



Some Logical Aspects of Purpose 349 

scientific ideas, viewed as to their conscious significance, are, 
as Professor Stout has well said, plans of action." (2) "You 
sing to yourself a melody ; you are then and there conscious 
that the melody, as you hear yourself singing it, partially 
fulfils and embodies a purpose." 1 When we come to the 
problem of the relation between the internal and external 
meaning, we shall find that the idea as internal meaning 
comes into a third relation to purpose, viz., that of having 
the further purpose to agree or correspond to the external 
meaning. "Is the correspondence reached between idea and 
object the precise correspondence that the idea itself intended ? 

If it is, the idea is true Thus it is not mere 

agreement, but intended agreement, that constitutes truth." 2 
Thus the idea is (1) the purpose, (2) the partial fulfilment 
of the purpose, and (3) has a further purpose — to correspond 
to an object in the " absolute system of ideas." 

The fir.st statement of the internal meaning as constitut- 
ing the plan or purpose is, I take it, the conception of the 
internal meaning as an ideal construction which gives a work- 
ing form , a definition to the ' ' indefinite sort of restlessness " and 
blind feeling of dissatisfaction out of which the need of and 
demand for thought arises. 3 This accords with the scientific 
conception of the idea as a working hypothesis. If this 
interpretation of idea were steadily followed throughout, it is 
difficult to see how it could fail to lead to a conception of 
reality quite different from that described as "a certain 
absolute system* of ideas." 

The second definition of internal meaning is the one in 
which it is stated as the "partial expression," "embodiment," 
and "fulfilment" of a single conscious purpose, and in which 
subsequently and consequently the idea is identified with 
"any conscious act," for example, singing. The first part of 
the statement appears to say that the idea of a melody is in 

i Pp. 22, 23 ; italics mine. 2 p. 307. 3 p. 327. 



350 Studies in Logical Theory 

"partial fulfilment" of the idea regarded as the purpose to 
sing the melody. But, as the first statement of internal 
meaning implies, how can one have a purpose to sing the 
melody except in and through the idea ? It is precisely the 
construction of an idea that transforms the vague "indefinite 
restlessness" and dissatisfaction into a purpose. The idea is 
the defining, the sharpening of the blind activity of mere 
sensation, mere want, into a plan of action. 

However, Mr. Royce meets this difficulty at once by the 
statement that the term "idea" here not only covers the 
activity involved in forming the idea, e. g., the idea of sing- 
ing, but includes the action of singing, which fulfils this 
purpose. "In the same sense any conscious act at the 
moment when you perform it not merely expresses, but is, 
in my present sense, an idea." 1 

But this sort of an adjustment between the idea as the 
purpose and as the fulfilment of the purpose raises a new 
question. What here becomes of the distinction between 
immediate and mediating experience? Surely there is a 
pretty discernible difference between experience as a pur- 
posive idea and the experience which fulfils this purpose. 
To call them both "ideas" is at least confusing, and indeed 
it appears that it is just this confusion that obscures the 
fundamental difficulty in dealing, later on, with the problem 
of truth and error. To be sure, the very formation of the 
idea as the purpose, the "plan of action," is the beginning 
of the relief from the "indefinite restlessness." On the 
other hand, it defines and sharpens the dissatisfaction. 
When this vague unrest takes the form of a purpose to 
attain food or shelter, or to sing in tune, it is of course the 
first step toward solution. But this very definition of the 
dissatisfaction intensifies it. The idea as purpose, then, 
instead of being the fulfilment, appears to be the plan, the 

1 P. 23 ; italics mine. 



Some Logical Aspects of Purpose 351 

method of fulfilment. The fulfilling experience is the 
further experience to which the idea points and leads. 

To follow a little farther this relation between the pur- 
posive and fulfilling aspects of experience, it is of course 
apparent that the idea as the purpose, the "plan of action," 
must as a function go over into the fulfilling experience. 
My purpose to sing the melody must remain, in so far as the 
action is a conscious one, until the melody is sung. I say 
"as a function," for the specific content of this purpose is 
continuously changing. The purpose is certainly not the 
same in content after half the melody has been sung as it is 
at the beginning. This means that the purpose is being 
progressively fulfilled; and as part of the purpose is ful- 
filled each moment, so a part of the original content of the 
idea drops out; and when the fulfilling process of this par- 
ticular purpose is complete, or is suspended — for, in Mr. 
Royce's view, it never is complete in human experience — 
that purpose then gives way to some other, perhaps one 
growing out of it, but still one regarded as another. A 
purpose realized, fulfilled, cannot persist as a purpose. We 
may desire to repeat the experience in memory; i. e., 
instead of singing aloud, simply, as Mr. Royce says, "silently 
recall and listen to its imagined presence." But here we 
must remember that the memory experience, as such, is not 
an idea in the logical sense at all. It is an immediate experi- 
ence that is fulfilling the idea of the song which constitutes 
the purpose to recall it, just as truly as the singing aloud 
fulfils the idea of singing aloud. Shouting, whistling, or 
"listening in memory to the silent notes" may all be equally 
immediate, fulfilling experiences. Doubtless the idea as 
purpose involves memory, as Mr. Royce says. 1 But it is a 
memory used as a purpose, and it is just this use of the 
memory material as a purpose that makes it a logical idea. 

1C/. p. 34; also p. 22. 



352 Studies in Logical Theory 

In its content the purposive idea is just as immediate and as 
mechanical as any other part of experience. " Psychology 
explains the presence and the partial present efficacy of 
this purpose by the laws of motor processes, of habit, or of 
what is often called association." ' Here " idea," however, 
simply means, as Mr. Royce takes it in his second state- 
ment, conscious content of any sort. But this is not the 
meaning of "idea" in the logical sense. The logical 
idea is a conscious content used as an organizer, as "a 
plan of action/' to get other contents. If, for example, 
in the course of writing a paper one wishes to recall an 
abstract distinction, as the distinction dawns in conscious- 
ness, it is not an idea in the logical sense. It is just 
as truly an immediate fulfilling experience as is a good 
golf stroke. So in the mathematician's most abstruse pro- 
cesses, which Mr. Royce so admirably portrays, the 
results for which he watches "as empirically as the astrono- 
mer alone with his star" are not ideas in the logical sense; 
they are immediate, fulfilling experiences. 2 The distinction 
between the idea as the mediating experience — that is, the 
logical idea — and the immediate fulfilling experience is 
therefore not one of content, but of use. 

There is a sense, however, in which the idea as a purpose 
can be taken as the partial fulfilment of another purpose ; in 
the sense that any purpose is the outgrowth of activity involv- 
ing previous purposes. This becomes evident when we 
inquire into the "indefinite restlessness" and dissatisfaction 
out of which the idea as purpose springs. Dissatisfaction 
presupposes some activity already going on in attempted ful- 

i P. 35. 

2 This warns us that in the phrase, " a plan of action," the term " action " must 
be more inclusive than it is in much current discussion. It must not be limited to 
gymnastic performance. It must apply to any sort of activity planned for, and 
which, when it arrives, fulfils the plan. This, I take it, is the import of the para- 
graph at the top of p. 7 of Professor James's Philosophical Conceptions and Practi- 
cal Results. 



Some Logical Aspects of Purpose 353 

filment of some previous purpose. If one is dissatisfied with 
his singing, or with not singing, it is because one has already 
purposed to participate in the performance of a company of 
people which now he finds singing a certain melody, or one 
has rashly contracted to entertain a strenuous infant who 
is vociferously demanding his favorite ditty. This is 
only saying that any given dissatisfaction and the purpose 
to which it gives rise grow out of activity involving previous 
purposing. But this does not do away with the distinction 
between the idea as a purpose and the immediate fulfilling 
experience. 

If the discussion appears at this point to be growing 
somewhat captious, let us pass to a consideration of the 
relation between internal and external meanings, where 
the problem of truth and error appears, and where the vital 
import of these distinctions becomes more obvious. 

II. PURPOSE AND THE JUDGMENT 

Mr. Royce begins with the traditional definition of truth, 
which he then proceeds to reinterpret: 

Truth is very frequently defined in terms of external meaning 

as that about which we judge In the second place, truth has 

been defined as the correspondence between our ideas and their 
objects} .... When we undertake to express the objective 
validity of any truth, we use judgment. These judgments, if sub- 
jectively regarded, that is, if viewed merely as processes of our own 
present thinking, whose objects are external to themselves, involve 
in all their more complex forms, combinations of ideas, devices 
whereby we weave already present ideas into more manifold 
structure, thereby enriching our internal meaning; but the act of 
judgment has always its other, its objective aspect. The ideas 

when we judge are also to possess external meaning It is 

true, as Mr. Bradley has well said, that the intended subject of 
every judgment is reality itself. The ideas that we combine when 
we judge about external meanings are to have value for us as truth 

1P.270. 



354 Studies in Logical Theory 

only in so far as they not only possess internal meaning, but also 
imitate, by their structure, what is at once other than themselves, 
and, in significance, something above themselves. That, at least, 
is the natural view of our consciousness, just in so far as, in 
judging, we conceive our thought as essentially other than its 
external object, and as destined merely to correspond thereto. 
Now we have by this time come to feel how hard it is to define the 
Reality to which our ideas are thus to conform, and about which 
our judgments are said to be made, so long as we thus sunder 
external and internal meanings. 1 

The universal judgment. — The problem is, then, to 
discover just the nature and ground of this relation between 
the internal and external meaning, between the idea and its 
object. This relation is established in the act of judgment. 
Taking first the universal judgment, we find here that the 
internal meaning has at best only a negative relation to the 
external meaning. 

To say that all A is B is in fact merely to assert that the real 
world contains no objects that are A, but that fail to be of the class 
B. To say that no A is B is to assert that the real world contains 
no objects that are at once A and B. 2 

The universal judgments then "tell us indirectly what is 
in the realm of external meaning; but only by first telling 
us what is not." 3 

However, these universal judgments have after all a 
positive value in the realm of internal meaning; that is, as 
mere thought. 

This negative character of the universal judgments holds true 
of them, as we have just said, just in so far as you sunder the 
external and internal meaning, and just in so far as you view the 
real as the beyond, and as the merely beyond. If you turn your 
attention once more to the realm of ideas, viewed as internal mean- 
ing, you see, indeed, that they are constantly becoming enriched in 
their inner life by all this process. To know by inner demonstra- 
tion that 2+2 = 4 and that this is necessarily so, is not yet to 

1 Pp. 270, 271. 2 p. 276. 3 p. 277. 



Some Logical Aspects of Purpose 355 

know that the external world, taken merely as the Beyond, contains 
any true or finally valid variety of objects at all, any two or four 

objects that can be counted On the other hand, so far as 

your internal meaning goes, to have experienced within that which 
makes you call this judgment necessary, is indeed to have observed 
a character about your own ideas which rightly seems to you very 
positive. 1 

This passage deserves especial attention. In the light of 
Kant, and in view of Mr. Royce' s general definition of the 
judgment as the reference of internal to external meanings, 
one is puzzled to find that for the mathematician the positive 
value of the judgment "two and two are four" is confined 
to the realm of internal meaning. To be sure, Mr. Royce 
says that this limitation of the positive value of the uni- 
versal judgment to the world of internal meaning occurs 
only when the external and internal meaning are sundered. 
But the point is : Does the mathematician or anyone else 
ever so sunder as to regard the judgment " two and two ar 
four" as of positive value only as internal meaning 
Indeed, in another connection Mr. Royce himself shows 
most clearly that mathematical results are as objective and 
as empirical as the astronomer's star.* Nor would it appear 
competent for anyone to say here: "Of course, they are not 
internal meanings after we come to see, through the kind 
offices of the epistemologist, that the internal meanings are 
valid of the external world." We are insisting that they 
are never taken by the mathematician and scientists at 
first as merely internal meaning whose external meaning 
is then to be established. Surely the mathematical judg- 
ment, or any other, does not require an epistemological 
midwife to effect the passage from internal to external 
meaning. The external meaning is there all the while 
in the form of the diagrams and motor tensions and 
images with which the mathematician works. The difficulty 

iPp. 280, 281. 2 See p. 256. 




356 Studies in Logical Theory 

here again seems to be that the distinction above discussed 
between the idea in the logical sense, as purpose, and the 
immediate fulfilling experience is lost sight of. The rela- 
tion between two and four is not first discovered as a merely 
internal meaning. It is discovered in the process of ful- 
filling some purpose involving the working out of this 
relation. So the sum of the angles of a triangle is not 
discovered as a mere internal meaning whose external 
meaning is then to be found. It is found in working with 
the triangle. It is discovered in the triangle. And, once 
more, it matters not if the triangle here is a mere memory 
image. In relation to the purpose, to the logical idea, it is 
as truly external and objective as pine sticks or chalk marks. 
The streams of motor, etc., images that flow spontaneously 
under the stimulus of the purpose are just as immediate 
fulfilling experiences as the manipulation of sticks or chalk 
lines. 

The difficulty in keeping the universal judgment, as a 
judgment, in terms of merely internal meaning may be seen 
from the following: 

As to these two types of judgments, the universal and the par- 
ticular, they both, as we have seen, make use of experience. The 
universal judgments arise in the realm where experience and idea 
have already fused into one whole; and this is precisely the realm 
of internal meanings. Here one constructs and observes the con- 
sequences of one's construction. But the construction is at once 

an experience of fact and an idea Upon the basis of such 

ideal constructions one makes universal judgments. These in a 
fashion still to us, at this stage, mysterious, undertake to be valid 
of that other world — the world of external meaning. 1 

One is somewhat puzzled to know just what is meant by 
the fusion "of experience and idea." We must infer that it 
means the fusion of some aspect of experience which can be 
set over against idea, and this has always meant the external 

i P. 289 ; italics mine. 



Some Logical Aspects of Purpose 357 

meaning, and this interpretation seems further warranted 
by the statement immediately following which describes the 
fusion as one "of fact and idea." The situation then seems 
to be this: An internal and an external meaning, a fact and 
an idea, "fuse into one whole" and thus constitute that 
which is yet "precisely the realm of internal meanings," 
which aims to be valid of still another world of external 
meanings. And this waives the question of how experience 
fused into one whole can be an internal meaning, since as 
such it must be in opposition and reference to an external 
meaning; or conversely, how experience can be at once fact 
and idea and still be "fused into one whole." 

Nor does the difficulty disappear when we turn to 
the aspects of universality and necessity. What is the 
significance and basis of universality and necessity as con- 
fined merely to the realm of internal meaning ? 

So far as your internal meaning goes, to have experienced 
within that which makes you call this judgment necessary is, 
indeed, to have observed a character about your own ideas which 
rightly seems to you very positive. 1 

But what is it that we "experience within" which makes 
us call this judgment necessary ? In the discussion of the 
relation of the universal judgment to the disjunctive judg- 
ment, through which the former is shown to get even its 
negative force, there is an interesting statement : 

One who inquires into a matter upon which he believes himself 
able to decide in universal terms, e. g., in mathematics, has present 
to his mind, at the outset, questions such as admit of alternative 
answers. "A," he declares, "in case it exists at all, is either B or 
C." Further research shows universally, perhaps, that No A is B. 

The last sentence is the statement referred to. What is 
meant by "further research shows universally, perhaps, that 
No A is B" ? What kind of "research," internal or external, 

1 P. 281 ; italics mine. 



358 Studies in Logical Theory 

can show this ? In short, there appears to be as much 
difficulty with universality and necessity in the realm of 
internal meaning as in the reference of internal to external 
meaning. 1 

Instead, however, of discussing this point, Mr. Royce 
pursues the problem of the relation of the external and 
internal meaning, and finds that regarded as sundered there 
is no basis so far for even the negative universality and 
necessity in the reference of the internal meaning to the 
external. 

For at this point arises the ancient question, How can you know 
at all that your judgment is universally valid, even in this ideal 
and negative way, about that external realm of validity, in so 
far as it is external, and is merely your Other,— the Beyond ? Must 
you not just dogmatically say that that world must agree with your 
negations ? This judgment is indeed positive. But how do you 
prove it ? The only answer has to be in terms which already sug- 
gest how vain is the very sundering in question. If you can pre- 
determine, even if but thus negatively, what cannot exist in the 
object, the object then cannot be merely foreign to you. It must 
be somewhat predetermined by your Meaning. 2 

But in the universal judgment this determination, as referred 
to the external meaning, is only negative. 

The particular judgment. — It is then through the par- 
ticular judgment that the universal judgment is to get any 
positive value in its reference to the external meaning. 

As has been repeatedly pointed out in the discussions on recent 
Logic, the particular judgments — whose form is Some A is B, or 
Some A is not B — are the typical judgments that positively assert 
Being in the object viewed as external. This fact constitutes their 
essential contrast with the universal judgments. They undertake 
to cross the chasm that is said to sunder internal and external 
meanings ; and the means by which they do so is always what is 
called " external experience." 

1 It is worth noting in passing that here the universal appears to be located in 
finite experience, while the ground of the particular is in the absolute. 

2 P. 282. 



Some Logical Aspects of Purpose 359 

It is now high time to ask why the internal meaning 
seeks this external meaning. Why does it seek an object ? 
Why does it want to cross the chasm? In other words, 
what is the significance of the demand for the particular 
judgment? In the introduction we have been told, as a 
matter of description, that the internal meanings do seek 
the external meaning, but why do they? We have also 
been told that universal judgments "develop and enrich 
the realm of internal meaning." Why, then, should there 
be a demand for the external meaning, for a further object? 
The answer is: 

We have our internal meanings. We develop them in inner 
experience. There they get presented as something of universal 
value, but always in fragments. They, therefore, so far dissatisfy. 
We conceive of the Other wherein these meanings shall get some 
sort of final fulfilment. 1 

It is, then, the incomplete and fragmentary character of 
the internal meaning that demands the particular judgment. 
The particular judgment is to further complete and deter- 
mine the incomplete and indeterminate internal meaning. 
And yet no sooner is this particular judgment made than 
we are told that "it is a form at once positive, and very 
unsatisfactorily indeterminate." Again: 2 

The judgments of experience, the particular judgments, express 
a positive but still imperfect determination of internal meaning 
through external experience. The limit or goal of this process 
would be an individual judgment wherein the will expressed its 
own final determination. 3 

Apparently, then, the particular judgment to which the 
internal meaning appeals for completion and determination 
only succeeds in increasing the fragmentary and indetermi- 
nate character. 

This brings us to another "previous question." Just 

i P. 284 ; italics mine. 2 p. 283. 3 p. 332. 



360 Studies in Logical Theory 

what are we to understand by this " fragmentary " and 
"indeterminate" character of the internal meaning? In 
what sense, with reference to what, is it incomplete and 
fragmentary ? Later we shall be told that it is with refer- 
ence to " its own final and completely individual expression." 
This is to be reached in the individual judgment. And if 
we ask what is meant by this final, complete, and individual 
expression — which, by the way, no human being can 
experience — we read, wondering all the while how it can be 
known, that it is simply " the expression that seeks no other," 
that "is satisfied," that "is conclusive of the search for per- 
fection." 1 Waiving for the present questions concerning 
the basis of this satisfaction and perfection, all this leaves 
unanswered our query concerning the other end of the 
matter, viz., the meaning and criterion of the fragmentary 
and indeterminate character of these internal meanings. 

If we here return to the first definition of internal mean- 
ing of the idea as a purpose in the sense of "a plan of 
action," such as " singing in tune," or getting the properties 
of a geometrical figure, it does not seem difficult to find a 
basis and meaning for this fragmentary and indeterminate 
character. First we may note in a general way that it is of 
the very essence of a plan or purpose to lead on to a fulfill- 
ing experience such as singing in tune, or reaching a mathe- 
matical equation. But here this fulfilling experience to 
which the plan points is not a mere working out of detail 
inside the plan itself, although, indeed, this does take place. 
If this were all the fulfilling experience meant, it is difficult 
to see how we should escape subjective idealism. 2 We start 
with a relatively indeterminate idea and end with a more 
determinate idea, though, indeed, there is yet no criterion 
for this increased determination. To be sure, the idea as a 

1 P. 339. 

2 This ghost of subjectivism haunts the entire part of the essay in which the 
final fulfilment of finite ideas is found in " a certain absolute system of ideas." 



Some Logical Aspects of Purpose 361 

plan of action, as has already been stated, does undergo 
change and does become, if you please, more definite and 
complete as a plan; but this does not constitute its fulfil- 
ment. Its fulfilment surely is to be found in the immediate 
experiences of singing, etc., to which the idea points and 
leads. 

The fragmentary and incomplete character of the internal 
meaning as a plan of action does not, then, after all, so much 
describe the plan itself as it does the general condition of ex- 
perience out of which the idea arises. Experience takes on the 
form of a plan, of an idea, precisely because it has fallen apart, 
has become "fragmentary." It is just the business of the 
internal meaning, as Mr. Royce so well shows, to form a 
plan, an ideal, an hypothetical synthesis that shall stimulate 
an activity, which shall satisfactorily heal the breach. 
"Fragmentary" is a quality, then, that belongs, not to the 
idea in itself considered, but to the general condition of 
experience, of which the idea as a plan is an expression. 

If, now, the fragmentary character of the internal mean- 
ing is determined simply with relation to the fulfilling 
experiences, such as singing in tune, adjustments of geo- 
metrical figures, etc., to which it points and leads, it seems 
as if the completion of the internal meaning must be defined 
in the same terms. And this would appear to open a pretty 
straight path to the redefinition of truth and error. 

III. THE CRITERION OP TRUTH AND ERROR 

At the outset, truth was defined as the "correspondence" 
or " agreement " of an idea with its object. But we have 
seen that correspondence or agreement with an object 
means the completion and determination of the idea itself, 
and since the idea is here a specific "plan of action," it 
would seem that the "true" idea would be the one that can 
complete itself by stimulating a satisfying activity. The 



362 Studies in Logical Theory 

false idea would be one that cannot complete itself in a sat- 
isfying activity, such as singing in tune, constructing a 
mathematical equation, etc., and just this solution is very 
clearly expounded by our author. In the case of mathe- 
matical inquiry, 

In just so far as we pause satisfied we observe that there "is 
no other" mathematical fact to be sought in the direction of the 
particular inquiry in hand. Satisfaction of purpose by means of 
presented fact and such determinate satisfaction as sends us to no 
other experience for further light and fulfillment, precisely this 
outcome is itself the Other that is sought when we begin our 
inquiry. 1 

So "when other facts of experience are sought," if I watch 
for stars or for a chemical precipitate, or for a turn in the 
stock market, or in the sickness of a friend, my ideas are 
true when they are satisfied with "the presented facts." Again, 

It follows that the finally determinate form of the object of any 
finite idea is that form which the idea itself would assume when- 
ever it became individuated, or in other words, became a completely 
determined idea, an idea or will fulfilled by a wholly adequate 
empirical content, for which no other content need be substituted 
or from the point of view of the satisfied idea, could be substituted. 2 

In such passages as these it seems clear that the test of 
the truth of an idea is its power to bring us to the point 
where we "pause satisfied," where "no other content need 
be substituted," etc. Nor in such passages does there seem 
to be any doubt of reaching satisfaction in particular cases. 
Here, it appears, we may sing in tune, we may get the 
desired precipitate, and possibly even interpret the stock 
market correctly. Of course, the discord, the hunger, the 
loss, will come again; but so will new ideas, new truths. 
"Man thinks in order to get control of his world and thereby 
of himself." 3 Then the control actually gained must meas- 
ure the value, the truth of his thought. Do you wish to 

i P. 330 ; italics mine. 2 p. 337. 3 p. 286. 



Some Logical Aspects of Purpose 363 

sing in tune, "then your musical ideas are false if they lead 
you to strike what are then called false notes." 1 

It should also be noticed that here this desired deter- 
mination does not consist in a further determination of the 
mere idea as such. It is found in "the presented fact," in 
the immediate activity of singing, of getting precipitates, 
etc. As has already been pointed out, it is only by using 
the term "idea" for both the purpose and the fulfilling act 
of singing that this "pause of satisfaction" can be ascribed 
to the further determination of the idea. As such, as also 
before remarked, the sort of determination that the idea 
here gets means its termination, its disappearance in the 
immediate experiences of singing, etc., to which it leads. 
The "indefinite restlessness" of hunger and cold would 
scarcely be satisfied by getting more determinate and 
specific ideas only of food and shelter. The satisfaction 
comes when the ideas are "realized," when the "plans" are 
swallowed up in fulfilment. 

But in all this nothing has been said about "the certain 
absolute system of ideas," nor does there appear to be here 
any demand for it. To be sure, in the passages just con- 
sidered, experience has been found to become "fragmentary," 
but it has also been found capable of healing, of wholing 
itself, not of course into any "final whole," but into the unity 
of "satisfaction" as regards "the particular inquiry in 
hand." There is of course failure as well, but this also is 
not final. It means simply that we must look farther for 
the* "pause of satisfaction," that we must construct another 
idea, another "plan of action." 

But, after having shown that the idea as a plan of action 
may lead to satisfaction in the particular case, and that its 
success or failure so to do is one measure of its truth or 
falsity, we are now suddenly aroused to the fact that after 

i P. 307. 



364 Studies in Logical Theoey 

all thought does not lead us to the completed "absolute 
system of ideas," to a final stage of eternal unbroken satis- 
faction. 

But never in our human process of experience do we reach that 
determination. It is for us the object of love and of hope, of desire 
and of will, of faith and of work, but never of present finding. 1 

If at this point one asks: Whence this absolute system 
of ideas? Why have we to reckon with it at all? there 
appears to be little that is satisfying. Indeed, it seems 
difficult to get rid of the impression that this "certain 
absolute system of ideas" is on our hands as a philosophical 
heirloom from the time of Plato, so hallowed by time and 
so established by centuries of acceptance that we have 
ceased to ask for its credentials. To ground it in the 
"essentially fragmentary character of human experience" 
appears to be a petitio, for experience does not appear 
"essentially fragmentary" in this sense until after the 
absolute system has been posited. 

And this brings to notice that at this point both the 
fragmentary and unitary characters of experience take on 
new meaning. So far this fragmentary character has been 
defined with reference to "the particular inquiry in hand." 
Now, since the distinction between absolute and human 
experience has emerged, the fragmentary character becomes 
an absolute quality of the latter in contrast with the former. 
So, mutatis mutandis, of unity. Up to this point unity, 
wholeness, has been possible within human experience in the 
case of particular problems, such as singing in tune, etc. But 
with the appearance of the absolute system of ideas, whole- 
ness is now the exclusive quality of the latter, as incomplete- 
ness is of human experience, though of course the working 
unity, the unity resulting in "pauses of satisfaction," must 
still remain in the latter. 

1 P. 297. 



Some Logical Aspects of Purpose 365 

The problem now is to somehow work the absolute system 
of ideas into connection with the conception of the idea as a 
purpose, as a concrete plan of action. Here is where the 
third conception of the relation between idea and purpose, 
described at the beginning, comes into play — the conception 
in which the idea, instead of being the purpose, or the ful- 
filment of a purpose, has the purpose to correspond with, or 
represent "its own final and completely individual expres- 
sion," contained in the absolute system. From the previous 
standpoint the idea's "own final and completely individual 
expression" has been found in the fulfilling experiences of 
singing in tune, getting mathematical equations, chemical 
precipitates, etc. Here this complete individual experience 
can never be found in finite, human experience, but must be 
sought in the absolute system — and this can be only "the 
object of love and hope, of desire and will, never of present 
finding." 

Notwithstanding the many previous protestations that the 
purposive function of the idea is its "primary" and "most 
essential" character, we are here forced to fall back upon 
correspondence — representation as the primary, the essential, 
and indeed, it appears at times, as the sole function. For in 
the attempt to bring these two functions together the purpos- 
ive function is swallowed up in the representative. The idea 
still is, or has a purpose, a "plan of action," but this pur- 
pose, this plan, is now nothing but to represent and corre- 
spond with its own final and completed form in the absolute 
system. By this simple coup is the purposive function of 
the idea reduced at once to the representative. Nor is it 
pertinent to urge at this point that every purpose involves 
representation, that the plan must be some sort of an image 
or scheme which symbolizes and stimulates the thing to 
be done. This no one would question, but now the sole 
"thing to be done" apparently is to perfect this representa- 



366 Studies in Logical Theory 

tion of the complete and individual form in the absolute 
system. 1 

Once more, an array of passages could be marshaled from 
almost every page refuting any such interpretation as this, 
but they would be passages expounding the part played by 
the idea in such concrete experiences as singing, measuring, 
etc., not in representing an absolute system of ideas. Even 
as regards the latter one might urge that, by insisting on 
the active character of the idea, we could after all regard 
this absolute system as a life of will after the fashion of our 
own, were it not at once described as "the complete embodi- 
ment," "the final fulfilment," of finite ideas. A life con- 
sisting of mere fulfilment seems a baffling paradox. And 
its timeless character only adds to the difficulty. More- 
over, if we regard the system as constituted by such con- 
crete activities as measuring and singing, etc., while we 
liave saved will, we shall now have to fall back upon our first 
conception of truth as found in the idea which unifies the 
fragmentary condition of experience as related to specific 
problems, not fragmentary as related to an absolute system. 

This brings us to the final and crucial point of the dis- 
cussion, the part which purpose plays in the determination 
of truth and error from the standpoint of "the absolute 
system of ideas." When is this purpose of the idea to cor- 
respond with its absolute, final, and completed form fulfilled, 

i This reduction of the purposive to the representative function carries with it 
an interesting implication concerning the whole character and relationship of 
thought and will. From beginning to end, on almost every page, Mr. Eoyce insists 
upon the idea as an expression of will. At the outset we read : " When we try to 
define the idea in itself, as a conscious fact, our best means is to lay stress upon the 
sort of will or active meaning which any idea involves for the mind that forms the 
idea" (p. 22). Again: "The idea is a will seeking its own determination. It is 
nothing else " (p. 332)— and so on throughout the lectures. And we have already seen 
how consistently this is worked out in the analysis of concrete acts, such as singing, 
etc. But now, as related to the absolute system, the will, as embodied in the idea, is 
to find its final determination in approximating the certain absolute system of ideas. 
This would seem to make will but little more than the mere form of representation 
itself. The idea is a will, but in its relation to truth its will is " to correspond even 
in its vagueness to its own final and completely individual expression." 



Some Logical Aspects of Purpose 367 

or partially fulfilled? And here at the very outset is a 
difficulty. We have read repeatedly that the idea is itself 
"the partial fulfilment of a purpose." It is now to seek an 
object which shall increase this degree of fulfilment, but 
still this fulfilment shall be incomplete. And when we 
come to consider error, it too will be found to consist in a 
partial fulfilment. So it appears that there are three stages 
of "partial fulfilment" to be discriminated, one belonging 
to the idea itself, another to finite truth, and still another 
to error. 

Returning to the problem, from this point on we find the 
two standpoints, that of the specific situation and that of the 
absolute system, so closely interwoven and entangled that 
they are followed with great difficulty. We have already 
seen that the idea seeks correspondence with its object, 
because it is "fragmentary," "incomplete," "indetermined." 
And there we found that this indeterminate and frag- 
mentary character belonged to the idea as a purpose, a 
plan of seeking relief from some sort of ' ' restlessness " 
and "dissatisfaction," such as singing out of tune, etc. 
Here it is the incompleteness of an imperfect representation 
of its object in the absolute system that is the motif, and 
how it is to effect an improvement in its imperfect condition 
is now the problem. Here again the appeal is to purpose. 
Whatever may constitute the absolute system, one thing is 
assured: nothing in it can be an object except as the finite 
idea "intends it," purposes it, to be its object. Again must 
we ask: On what basis is this object in the absolute system 
selected at all ? In general the answer is : On the basis of a 
need of "further determination;" but when we further ana- 
lyze this, we find it means on the basis of a specific want or 
need, such as food, shelter, measuring, singing, etc. The 
basis of the selection, then, is entirely on the side of the con- 
crete, finite situation. 



368 Studies in Logical Theory 

Here, too, we might ask: Whence the confidence that 
there will be found something in the absolute system 
that will fulfil the purpose generated on the side of the 
finite ? Must we not here fall back on something like a pre- 
established harmony ? To this our author would say: "Yea, 
verily. The fact that the absolute system responds to the 
finite needs does precisely show that the finite and the abso- 
lute cannot be sundered." But when we try to state how the 
purpose generated on the side of the finite can be met by 
the absolute system, the account again seems to run so much 
in terms of the finite experience that to call it a system of 
"final," "completed," and "fulfilled" ideas does not seem 
accurate. We must note here, too, the shifting in the sense 
of "purpose." The idea selects its object on the basis of the 
material needed to relieve the unrest and dissatisfaction of 
singing out of tune, etc. But now it is to be satisfied by 
increasing the extent of its representation of its object in the 
absolute system. 

And now, finally, what shall mark the attainment of this 
purpose of the idea to correspond and represent "its own 
completed form " ? When is the correspondence and repre- 
sentation true? Simply at the point where "we pause satis- 
fied," where " no other content need be substituted, or from 
the point of view of the satisfied idea could be substituted." 
That is all; there is no other answer. There are other 
statements, but they all come to the same thing. For 
instance : 

It is true — this instant's idea — if, in its own measure, and 
on its own plan, it corresponds, even in its vagueness, to its own 
final and completely individual expression. 1 

But the moment we ask what this "final and individual 
expression" is, and what is meant by "in its own measure," 

1 P. 339. 



Some Logical Aspects of Purpose 369 

and "on its own plan," we are thrown back at once upon the 
preceding statement. The next sentence following the pas- 
sage just quoted does indeed define this " individual expres- 
sion." "Its expression would be the very life of fulfilment 
of purpose which this present idea already fragmentarily 
begins, as it were, to express." But how can we know that 
the expression is "fragmentary" unless we have some experi- 
ence of wholeness? 

And here perhaps is the place to say, what has been im- 
plied all along, that this absolutely "fragmentary" character 
of human experience is an abstraction of the relatively dis- 
integrated condition into which experience temporarily falls, 
which abstraction is then reinstated as a fixed quality, over- 
looking the fact that experience becomes fragmentary only 
that it may again become whole. The absolute system, the 
final fulfilment, is in the same case. It too is but the hypo- 
statized abstraction of the function of becoming whole, of 
wholing and fulfilling, which manifests itself in the "pauses 
of satisfaction." 

"But," Mr. Royce would say, "the wholeness of the par- 
ticular instance is after all not a true and perfect wholeness, 
because we can always think of the fulfilling experience as 
possibly different, as having a possibly different embodi- 
ment." But this implies also a different purpose. More- 
over, it abstracts the purpose from the specific conditions 
under which the purpose develops. Thus in singing in tune 
one doubtless could easily imagine himself singing another 
tune, on another occasion, in another key, in a clear tenor 
instead of a cracked bass, etc. But if on this occasion, in 
this song, and with this cracked bass voice one, accepting 
all these conditions, does, with malice aforethought, purpose 
to strike the tune, and happily succeeds, why, for that pur- 
pose formed under the known and accepted conditions, is 
not the accomplishment final and absolute? Nor is the 



370 Studies in Logical Theory 

case any different, so far as I can see, in mathematical 
experience. To quote again: 

You think of numbers, and accordingly count one, two, three. 
Your idea of these numbers is abstract, a mere generality. Why? 
Because there could be other cases of counting, and other num- 
bers counted than the present counting process shows you, and why 
so? Because your purpose in counting is not wholly fulfilled by 
the numbers now counted. 1 

I confess I cannot see here in what respect the purpose 
is not fulfilled. Doubtless there could be "other cases of 
counting," and "other numbers," but these may not be 
included in my present purpose, which is simply to count 
here and now. In this passage the purpose is not very fully 
defined. One's counting is usually for something, if for 
nothing more than merely to illustrate the process. In this 
latter case one's purpose would be completely fulfilled by just 
the numbers used when he should " pause satisfied " with the 
illustration. Or, if I wish to show the properties of num- 
bers, then the discovery that there can always be more of 
them fulfils my purpose, since this endless progression is one 
of the properties. Or yet again, if one should suddenly 
become enamored of the process of counting, and forthwith 
should purpose to devote the rest of his days to it, it would 
still be fortunate that there were always other numbers to be 
counted. In other words, the idea as a purpose is formed 
with reference to, and out of, specific conditions. In the last 
analysis the problem always is: What is to be done here 
and now with the actual material at hand, under the present 
conditions ? As the purpose is determined by these specific 
conditions, so is the fulfilment. To say that the fulfilment 
might be different is virtually to say that the purpose might 
have been different, or indeed that the universe might have 
been different. 

1P.338. 



Some Logical Aspects of Purpose 371 

This necessity of falling back upon the character of the 
idea as a purpose in the sense of the specific "plan of action" 
comes into still bolder relief in the consideration of error 
from the standpoint of "the absolute system of ideas." As 
already mentioned, the initial and persistent problem here is 
to distinguish at all between truth and error in our experi- 
ence from this standpoint. All our efforts at representing 
the absolute system must fall short. What can we mean, 
then, by calling some of our ideas true and others false? 
The definition of error is as follows : 

An error is an error about a specific object, only in case the 
purpose, imperfectly defined by the vague idea at the instant when 
the error is made, is better defined, is in fact, better fulfilled by an 
object whose determinate character in some wise, although never 
absolutely, opposes the fragmentary efforts first made to define 
them. 1 

But in relation to the absolute system the later part of this 
statement holds of all our ideas. There always is the abso- 
lute object which would "better define" and "better fulfil" 
our purposes. Hence it is only in reference to the "spe- 
cific" instances of singing, measuring, etc., that a basis 
for the distinction can be found. Here our plan is not true 
so long as its mission of relieving the specific unrest and 
dissatisfaction, the specific discord or hunger, is unfulfilled. 
The only criterion, then, which we have been able to find 
for the fulfilment of the purpose, for the truth of the idea as 
representing an object in the absolute system, is the sense 
of wholeness, the " pause of satisfaction," which we experi- 
ence in realizing such specific purposes as "singing in tune." 
And if it be said again: "Precisely so; this only shows how 
intimate is the relation between our experience and the ab- 
solute system of ideas;" then must it also be said once more, 
either that the absolute system can be nothing more than an 

i P. 335. 



372 Studies in Logical Theory 

abstraction of the element of wholeness or whaling in our 
experience, or that thus far the relation appears to rest upon 
sheer assumption. 

Again, it may be insisted, as suggested at the outset of 
this discussion, that the idea can well have two purposes: 
one to help constitute and solve the specific problems of 
daily life ; the other to represent the absolute system. Very 
well, we must then make out a case for the latter. If the 
purposes are to be different, the purpose to represent the 
Absolute should have a criterion of its own. This we have 
not been able to find. On the contrary, whenever pushed 
to the point of stating a criterion for the representation of 
the absolute system, we have had to appeal, in every case, to 
the fulfilment of a specific finite purpose. And even if this 
purpose to represent the absolute system had some apparent 
standard of its own, we should not be content to leave the 
matter so. We should scarcely be satisfied to observe as a 
mere matter of fact that the idea has a reconstructive func- 
tion, and also a representative function. Such a brute 
dualism would be intolerable. 

IV. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 

In the end, the outcome of the endeavor to establish a 
connection between the relation of the idea to human expe- 
rience and its relation to the absolute system does not 
appear satisfying. The idea is left either with two inde- 
pendent purposes — one to reconstruct finite experience, the 
other to represent and symbolize the absolute system — or 
one of these purposes is merged in the other. When the 
attempt is made from the standpoint of the absolute system, 
the reconstructive purpose is swallowed up in the representa- 
tive. When, on the other hand, the need for a basis of 
distinction between truth and error "here on this bank and 
shoal of time" is felt, the representative disappears in the 



Some Logical Aspects of Purpose 373 

reconstructive function. Nowhere are we able to discover a 
true unification. To be sure, we have been told again and 
again that the representation of the absolute object, if only 
we could accomplish it, would be "the final fulfilment," 
"completion," and "realization" of the human, finite pur- 
pose. But besides a confessed impotency at the very start, 
this involves, as we have seen, either a sudden transforma- 
tion of the specific purpose of singing in tune, etc., into that 
of representing the absolute system, or a sheer assumption 
that the representation of the absolute object does somehow 
help in the realization of the specific finite purpose. No- 
where is there any account of how this help would be given. 

And this suggests that if the analysis of the idea as pur- 
pose, given at the outset of Mr. Royce's lecture, had been 
developed further, if the conditions and origin of purpose 
had been examined, it is difficult to see how this discrepancy 
could have escaped disclosure. Mr. Royce starts his account 
by simply accepting from psychology a general description 
of the purposive character of the idea. Even in the more 
detailed passages on purpose we have nothing but descrip- 
tions of purpose after it is formed. Nothing is said of the 
origin of this purposiveness. The purposive character of 
experience is of course very manifest, but what is the signifi- 
cance of this purposing in experience as a whole ? What is 
the source and the material of the purposes? 

It is this uncritical acceptance of the purposive quality 
of the idea that obscures the irrelevancy of its relation to 
the absolute system. If the idea must merely be or have a 
purpose, then it may as well be that of representing the 
absolute system as any other. Of course, there are trouble- 
some questions as to how our finite ideas ever got such a 
purpose; but, after all, if it is simply a matter of having 
any sort of a purpose, representing the absolute system may 
answer as well as anything. But when now we come to deal 



374 Studies in Logical Theoky 

with the problem of fulfilment, with the question of truth 
and error, we have to reckon with this neglect of the source 
of this purposiveness. 

It is this unanalyzed ground of the purpose that makes 
the matter of fulfilment so ambiguous. Such an analysis, we 
believe, would have shown that the conditions out of which 
the idea as a purpose arises determine also the sort of fulfil- 
ment possible. There are, indeed, one or two very general, 
but very significant, statements in this direction, if they 
were only followed up. For instance: 

In doing what we often call " making up our minds " we pass 
from a vague to a definite state of will and of resolution. In such 
cases we begin with perhaps a very indefinite sort of restlessness 
which arouses the question: "What is it that I want, what do I 
desire, what is my real purpose % " 

In other words, what does this restlessness mean? What 
is the matter? What is to be done? 

Purpose is born, then, out of restlessness and dissatisfac- 
tion. But whence comes this restlessness and dissatisfaction ? 
Surely we cannot at this point charge it to a discrepancy 
between our finite idea and the absolute object, since it is 
just this restlessness that is giving birth to the purposive 
idea. One thing, at any rate, appears pretty certain: this 
"indefinite restlessness" presupposes some sort of activity 
already going on. The restlessness is not generated in a 
vacuum. But why should this activity get into a condition to 
be described as "indefinite restlessness" and dissatisfaction ? 

Repugnant as it will be to many to have psycho-physical, 
to say nothing of biological, doctrines introduced into a 
logical discussion, I confess that, at this point facing the 
issue squarely, I see no other way. And it appears to me that 
just at this point it is the fear of phenomenalistic giants that 
has kept logic wandering so many years in the wilderness. 

What, then, in this action already going on is responsible 



Some Logical Aspects op Purpose 375 

for this restlessness? First let us note that "indefinite rest- 
lessness" and "dissatisfaction" are terms descriptive of what 
Mr. James calls "the first thing in the way of consciousness." 
This assumes consciousness as a factor in activity. So that 
our question now becomes: What is the significance of this 
factor of restless, dissatisfied consciousness in activity ? Now, 
there appears no way of getting at the part which conscious- 
ness plays different from that of discovering the function of 
anything else. And this way is simply that of observing, as 
best we may, the conditions under which consciousness 
operates, and what it does. Here the biologist and psycholo- 
gist with one voice inform us that this indefinite restlessness 
which marks the point of the operation of consciousness 
arises where, in a co-ordinated system of activities, there 
develop out of the continuation of the activity itself new 
conditions calling for a readjustment and reconstruction of 
the activity, if it is to go on. Consciousness then appears 
to be the function which makes possible the reorganization 
of the results of a process back into the process itself, thus 
constituting and preserving the continuity of activity. So 
interpreted, consciousness appears to be an essential element 
in the conception of a self-sustaining activity. This 
"indefinite restlessness," in which consciousness begins, 
marks, then, the operation of the function of reconstruction 
without which activity would utterly break down. 

Precisely because, then, the idea "as a plan" is projected 
and constructed in response to this restlessness must its ful- 
filment be relevant to it. It is when the idea as a purpose, 
a plan, born out of this matrix of restlessness, begins to 
aspire to the absolute system, and attempts to ignore or 
repudiate its lowly antecedents, that the difficulties concerning 
fulfilment begin. They are the difficulties that beset every 
ambition which aspires to things foreign to its inherited 
powers and equipment. 



376 Studies in Logical Theory 

A detailed account at this point of the construction and 
fulfilment of the idea as "a plan of action" would contain a 
consecutive reinterpretation of Mr. Royce's principal rubrics. 
Such an account the limits of this paper forbid. We shall 
have to be content with pointing out in a general way a few 
instances by way of illustration. 

In the first place, it is in this matrix of indefinite restless- 
ness out of which the idea is born that the "fragmentary 
character of experience," of which Mr. Royce is so keenly 
conscious, appears. But, once more, this fragmentary char- 
acter is discernible only by contrast with the wholeness on 
both sides of the fragments; the wholeness that precedes 
the restlessness, and the new "pause of satisfaction" toward 
which it points. Nor must we forget that the habit matrix, 
out of the disintegration of which the restlessness is immed- 
iately born, does not exist as some metaphysical ultimate out 
of which thought as such has evolved. Back of it is some 
previous purpose in whose service habit was enlisted. On 
the other hand, this disintegration means that the old pur- 
pose, the old plan, must be reconstructed ; that it, along with 
the disintegrated habit, becomes the material for a new plan, 
a new wholing of experience. 

In the next place, the construction of this new plan of 
action does involve "re-presentation." The first step in the 
transition from the condition of "indefinite restlessness" 
toward a "plan" is the diagnosis, the definition of the restless- 
ness. This involves the re-presentation in consciousness of 
the activities, out of which the restlessness has arisen. This 
re-presentation is also the beginning of the reconstruction. 
The diagnosis of the singing activity as being "out of tune" 
is the negative side of beginning to sing in tune. It is now 
a commonplace of psychology that all representation is 
reconstruction. And this is where Mr. Royce' s emphasis of 
the symbolic, the algebraic, as against the copy type of rep- 



Some Logical Aspects of Purpose 377 

resentation, has its application. All we want here is some 
sort of an image — visual, auditory, motor, it matters not — 
that shall serve to focus attention upon the singing activities 
until they are reconstructed sufficiently to bring us to the 
"pause of satisfaction." 1 But nowhere in all this is there any 
reference to the idea's object in the absolute system. Nor 
does there appear to be any call or place for such reference. 
The representation here is a part of the very process of 
forming the plan of further reconstruction out of the 
materials of the specific situation. Representation is not the 
plan's own end and aim. This is to stimulate a new set of 
activities that shall lead out of the present state of unrest 
and dissatisfaction. 

It is also true, as already mentioned, that in the process 
of fulfilling the plan, of realizing the idea, further determina- 
tion and specification is produced in the plan itself. The 
idea as a plan is certainly not formed all at once. Nor does 
it reach and maintain a fixed content. No purpose is ever 
realized in its original content. But this does not mean 
that its realization is, therefore, "partial," "incomplete," or 
"fragmentary." It is a part of its business to change. The 
purpose is not there for its own sake. The purpose is there 
as a means to the reorganization and reconstruction of expe- 
rience. It exists, as Mr. Royce says, as an instrument, "as a 
tool" for "introducing control into experience." And as, 
in the process of use, a tool always undergoes modification, 
so here, as an instrument for reconstructing habit, the plan, 
too, undergoes reconstruction. Indeed, as regards its con- 
tent, it is itself, as Mr. Royce says, as much a habit, as 
much "the product of association," as any part of experience. 
The purposing function, the purposing activity, remains; its 
content is constantly shifting. 

Here, too, is where "the submission of the idea to the 

i Cf. Me. Gore's paper, above. 



378 Studies in Logical Theory 

object" takes place. Only, here, it is not a submission to an 
object already constituted as it is in Mr. Royce's conception 
of the absolute system. The idea as an hypothetical plan of 
action, as a trial construction, must be tested by the activities it 
is attempting to reconstruct. That is to say, at this point the 
question is: Does the plan apply to the activities actually 
involved in the unrest ? Has it diagnosed the case properly, 
and is it therefore one in and through which these activities 
can operate and come to unity again? The "submission" 
here is the submission of the purpose, the end, to the 
material out of which it is formed, and with which it must 
work. But again this material to which the idea submits 
itself is anything but finally fixed and "complete" in form. 
On the contrary, as we have seen, it is just the fragmentary 
and incomplete condition of this material that calls for the 
idea. Yet the idea as a plan must be true to its mission, 
and to this material, and in this sense must submit itself to 
whatever modifications and reconstruction the material "dic- 
tates" as necessary in order that it may function in and 
through the plan. 1 

On the other hand — and this is the point to which Mr. 
Royce gives most emphasis — it is equally apparent that 
"the idea must determine its object." On this all philosophy, 
from Plato down, which approaches reality "from the side of 
ideas" is at stake. And this does not appear impossible if, 
again, the object is not already and eternally fixed and com- 
plete. If the object is one constructed out of the very 
mass of habit material which the idea is reconstructing, and if 
"determination" means not copying, but construction, then, 
indeed, must the idea "determine its object." Just for that 

i Cf. Baldwin's Development and Evolution, pp. 250, 251, on the necessity of the 
submission of the "new experience" to the test of its ability to utilize habit. 
Interpreted broadly, habit might here mean the whole mechanical side, including 
organism and environment, and so include Mr. Baldwin's second or "extra- 
organic " test. 



Some Logical Aspects of Purpose 379 

does it have its being. That is its sole mission. Here the 
determination of the object by the idea is not a mere 
abstract postulate; it is not based upon a general considera- 
tion of the disastrous consequences to our logical and ethical 
assumptions, if it were not so determined. Here not only 
the general necessity for it, but the modus operandi of this 
determination, is apparent. But, at the risk of tedious 
iteration, must it again be said that for the determination of 
the completed and perfected object in the absolute system 
not only is there nowhere any modus to be found, but, even 
if there were, it is difficult to see what it would have to do 
with the kind of determination demanded by such a specific 
sort of unrest as "singing out of tune," etc. The process of 
submission is thus a reciprocal one. Neither in the object 
nor in the idea is there a fixed scheme or order to which the 
other must submit and conform. And this is simply the 
logical commonplace that submission cannot be a one-sided 
affair, that determination must be reciprocal. 

This brings us to what might as well have been our intro- 
ductory as our concluding observation. It has just been 
said that the determination of the object by the idea is a 
vital matter in any philosophy which approaches reality 
"from the side of ideas." Such a way of approach must 
assert "the primacy of the world of ideas over the world as 
a fact." 1 Mr. Royce thus further states the case: 

I am one of those who hold that when you ask what is an idea, and 
how can ideas stand in any true relation to reality, you attack the 
world knot in the way that promises most for the untying of its 
meshes. This way is of course very ancient. It is the way of 

Plato It is in a different sense the way of Kant. If you 

view philosophy in this fashion, you subordinate the study of the 
world as fact to a reflection upon the world as idea. Begin by 
accepting upon faith and tradition the mere brute reality of the 
world as fact, and there you are sunk deep in an ocean of mystery. 

i P. 19. 



380 Studies in Logical Theory 

.... The world of fact surprises you with all sorts of strange con- 
trasts It baffles you with caprices like a charming and yet 

hopelessly wayward child, or like a bad fairy. The world of fact 
daily announces itself to you as a defiant mystery. 1 

Here we have concisely stated at the outset of the lectures 
the position which we have seen to be fraught with so many 
difficulties: the position, namely, which accepts to start with 
the opposition of the world as idea and the world as fact, as 
something given, instead of something to be accounted for; 
and which assumes that this opposition stands in the way of 
reaching reality, whereas it possibly may be of the very 
essence of reality. To be sure, the above statement of this 
opposition between the world as fact and as idea is but the 
expository starting-point. And it is true that the rest of the 
argument is occupied in the attempt to close this breach. 
But, as we have seen, except where the idea is expounded as 
a specific purpose, arising out of a specific experience of 
unrest, such as singing out of tune, etc. — except in this case, 
the breach is taken as found and the attempt to heal it is 
made by working forward from the opposition as given instead 
of back to its source. This opposition, of course, has its 
forward goal, but the difficulty is to find it without an explo- 
ration of its source. It is back in that matrix out of which 
the opposition has arisen that the line of direction to the 
goal is to be found. 

Moreover, in starting from this opposition of fact and idea 
as given, the only method of quelling it seems to be either 
that of reducing one side to terms of the other, or of appeal- 
ing to some new, and therefore external unifying, agency. 
But if the factors in the opposition are found, not one in 
submission to the other, nor having the "primacy" over the 
other, but as co-ordinate and mutually determining func- 
tions, developed from a common matrix and co-operating 

i Pp. 17, 18. 



Some Logical Aspects of Purpose 381 

in the work of reconstructing experience, some of the diffi- 
culties involved in the alternative methods just mentioned 
appear to drop out 1 

The point may be clearer if we recur to the passage and 
ask just what is meant by "the defiantly mysterious," 
"baffling," and "capricious" character of the world as fact — 
as "brute reality." First, if by the world as "fact," as 
"brute reality," we mean experience so brute that it is not 
yet "lighted up with ideas/' it is difficult to see how it could 
be mysterious or capricious, since mystery and caprice appear 
only when experience ceases to be taken merely as it comes 
and an inquiry for connections and meanings has begun. 
That is to say, there can be neither mystery nor caprice except 
in relation to some sort of order. And order is always a 
matter of ideas. But it is sufficient to submit Mr. Royce's 
own statement on this point: 

We all of us from moment to moment have experience. This 
experience comes to us in part as brute fact; light and shade, sound 

and silence, pain and grief and joy These given facts flow by; 

and were they all, our world would be too much of a blind prob- 
lem for us even to be puzzled by its meaningless presence. 2 

If next we take the world of fact as in contrast and co- 
ordinate with the world of ideas, mystery and caprice here, 
certainly, are not all on the side of the fact. Here, again, must 
they be functions of the relation between fact and idea. We 
have seen that without thought there is neither mystery nor 
caprice. The idea then cannot take part in the production 
of mystery and caprice, and forthwith deny its parenthood. 
Of course, mystery and caprice are not the final fruits of 
this co-ordinate opposition of fact and idea. They are but 
the first fruits — the relatively unorganized embryonic mass 
which through the further activities of the parent functions 
shall develop into the symmetry of truth and law. 

i See, above, Professor Dewey's Study III, pp. 49 ff. 2 P. 55. 



382 Studies in Logical Theory 

There appears then no ultimate "primacy" of either idea 
or fact over the other. Nor does either appear as a better 
way of approach to reality than the other. It is only when 
we say: "Lo! here in the idea," or "Lo! there in the fact 
is reality," that we find it "imperfect," "incomplete," and 
"fragmentary," and must straightway "look for another." 
But surely not in "a certain absolute system of ideas," 
which is "the object of love and hope, of desire and will, of 
faith and work, but never of present finding," shall we seek 
it. Rather precisely in the loving and hoping, desiring and 
willing, believing and working, shall we find that reality in 
which and for which both the "World as fact" and the 
"World as idea" have their being. 



INDEX 



Absolute : as constituting reality, 348 ; 
as related to truth and error, 363 if. ; 
as a hypostatized abstraction, 369. 

Absolute self, 330. 

Accessory : thought as, 58 ff. 

Activity : as social, 74 ; thought as, 78 ; 
interrupted, and judgment, 154; and 
hypothesis, 170; as sensori-motor, 193, 
200; (see Function, Reconstruction). 

JSsthetic experience : appreciative 

rather than reflective, 255 ; not a form 

of valuation, 339, 340. 
Alternatives: in judgment, 155; (see 

Disjunction) . 
Analogy, 171, 172, 175; in relation to 

habit, 176. 
Anaxagoras : in relation to the One and 

the Many, 219; his vods, 220, 221. 
Anaximander : and the infinite, 209; his 

process of segregation, 214, 215. 

Anaximenes: his apxy air, 209 ; his scheme 
of rarefaction and condensation, 209, 
213, 215, 224. 

Angell, J. R., 14 note, 345 note. 

Animism, 49 note. 

Antecedents of thought (see Stimu- 
lus). 

Applied logic: Lotze's definition, 6. 

Appreciation: distinguished from re- 
flection. 255, 339; not to be identified 
with valuation, 320-24, 338. 

'Apxv : meaning of search for, 211 ff . 

Association of ideas : refers to mean- 
ings, 33, 34; connection with thought, 
80; doctrine of: analogous to subjec- 
tivism in ethics, 261; presupposes a 
mechanical metaphysics, 330, 331 note. 

Atomists : treatment of the One and the 
Many, 221. 

Austrian economists, 307, 333. 

Authority and custom: logic of atti- 
tude of obedience to, 286; social con- 
ditions compatible with dominance of, 
286 ; failure of, as moral control, 286. 

Bacon: extreme empirical position, 156 
ff . ; view of induction, 157, 158. 

" Bad " : practical significance of, as mor- 
al predicate, 259 ; relation to " wrong," 
335. 

Baldwin, J. M., 257 note, 378 note. 

Becoming : as relative, 206. 

"Begrundung" and " Best ati gung": 
Wundt's distinction of, 179 ; criticised, 
181, 182. 

Biology : view of sensation, 58 ; use of, 
in logic, 374, 375. 



Bpsanquet, B., 59 note, 147, 189, 190, 191, 

300; (see Study V). 
Bradley, F. H., 47 note, 54 note, 90 ff., 

147, 189, 190, 191, 192, 194, 299 note 2, 331 

note, 332 nott, 353. 

Brentano, 250 note. 

Butler, J., 277. 

Certain, the : relation to tension, 50, 51 ; 
as datum, 57. 

Coefficients of reality, perception, 
and recognition : defined, 263-7 ; pres- 
ent in economic and ethical experience, 
267-9. 

Coexistence, coincidence, and coher- 
ence, 28, 29, 33-6, 58, 59, 68. 

Conceptions: Lotze's view of, 59; Ba- 
con's attitude toward, 157; relation to 
fact, 168 ; function in Greek philosophy, 
342; (see Idea, Image, Hypothesis). 

Conceptual logic: as related to idea 
and image, 188-92. 

Conscience : evolution of, 286, 287 ; am. 
biguous and transitional character of 
287; metaphysical implications of, as 
moral standard, 288 ; not autonomous 

288. 

Conscientiousness: dangers of, conse 
quent upon ideal of self-realization 
316; Green's defense of, referred to 
316 note. 

Conservation : of energy and mass, 206 
(see Energy). 

Content of knowledge: and logical 
object, originates in tension, 49 
thought's own, 65 ; and datum, 69 ; as 
truth, 79 ff. ; as static and dynamic, 73 
93 ff . , 110 ff . ; ( see Study IV ; Obj ecti vity 
Validity). 

»/CONTINUITY, 10, 13, 55. 

Control : idea and, 75, 129. 

Conversion of propositions, 171; in 
relation to habit, 176. 

Copernicus: his theory, 178; compared 
with Galileo's supposition, 179-81. 

Copula, 118 ff . ; scheme of mediation 
between subject and predicate, 208, 
214 ff. 

Correspondence: of datum and idea, 
51; of thought-content and thought- 
activity, 70; as criterion of truth, 82 ff., 
353 ff. 

Darwin, Charles, 146, 150, 179. 

Datum of thought, 7, 8, 24 ; as fact, 26, 
50, 52; Lotze's theory of, stated, 55; 
criticised, 56 ff. ; relation to induction, 
61; and content, 60, 70; (see Study III; 
Content, Fact, Stimulus). 



383 



384 



Studies in Logical Theory 



Deduction, 211, 212. 
Definition : invented by Socrates, 203. 
Democritus : attempts at definition, 203. 
Demonstrative judgment, 134. 
Determination: as criterion of truth, 

362 ff. ; impossibility of complete, in 

finite experience, 364. 
Dewey, John, 58 note, 86 note, 266 note 2, 

316 note, 381 note. 
Dialectic : Zeno as originator of, 203. 
Diogenes of Apollonia, 222 ff. 
Disjunction : in judgment, 115, 138. 

Dynamic: ideas as, and as static, 73, 76; 

reality as, 126. 
Earth : as an element, 213. 

Economic judgment: involves same 
type of process as physical, 235 ; a pro- 
cess of valuation, 236 ; type of situation 
evoking, 241-6, 293-5, 302, 303; distin- 
guished from ethical, 243 note, 246 note, 
271, 302, 303; relation to physical, 246 
note 3; subject of, the means of action, 
259, 304 ; analysis of process of, 304-12 ; 
distinguished from "pull and haul," 
237, 238 ; psychological account of, 310, 
311 ; a reconstructive process, 311, 312. 

"Egoism, Neo-Hegelian," 316. 

Ehrenfels, C. von, 318 note. 

Eidola : Bacon's view of, 157. 

Eleatics : their logical position, 216 ff. 

Elements : as four, 213; as infinite, 213 ff. 

Emerson, R. W., 204, 246 note. 

Empedocles: attempts at definition, 
203; treatment of the Oae and the 
Many, 218 ff. 

Empiricism, 11, 29, 47, 48, 61 ff . ; and ra- 
tionalism, 80; criticised, 156; Jevons, 
169 ; treatment of imagery, 186-8. 
*■*" Ends : controlling factors in acquisition 
of knowledge, 229 ; may themselves be 
objects of attention and judgment, 233 ; 
judgment of, inseparable from factual 
judgment, 234 ; conflict of, related, the 
occasion for ethical judgment, 238-41; 
indirect conflict of unrelated, the occa- 
sion for economic judgment, 241-3; the 
subject-matter of ethical judgment, 
258, 259; definition of, the goal of all 
judgment, 264, 272 ; not always explicit 
in judgment-process, 269, 270; nature 
of relation between, in ethical judg- 
ment, 273, 274, 291, 292; types of factual 
condition implied in acceptance of, 275, 
276; warranted by factual judgment, 
276 ; nature of, unrelatedness of, in eco- 
nomic judgment, 293-5, 302, 303; (see 
Purpose). 

Energy: principle of conservation of, 
206, 299, 300 ; not valid in sphere of val- 
uation, 328. 

"Energy-Equivalence": principle of, 
in economic judgment, 308, 309; mean- 
ing of, 309 note. 

Epistemology, 5-7, 10, 11, 13, 17, 18, 47, 73, 
341 ; origin of problem of, 344, 345. 



Erdmann, Benno: concerning induc- 
tion, 173. 

Error : criterion of, 371. 

Ethical judgment : involves same type 
of process as physical, 235; a process 
of valuation, 236, 332 ; type of situation 
evoking, 237-41, 291-4; distinguished 
from mechanical "pull and haul" 
between ends, 237, 238; distinguished 
from economic judgment, 243 note, 246 
note, 271, 302, 303; subject of, an end of 
action, 258 ; analysis of process of, 295- 
302; a reconstructive process, 295, 299. 

Existence : versus meaning, 216, 217. 

Experience: duality of, 16; logic of, 19- 
21; how organized, 42; relation of 
thought to organization of, 43-8; as 
disorganized, 75 ; (see Absolute, Func- 
tions) . 

Experiment : as form of deduction, 212. 

Fact : as equivalent to datum, 26, 50 ff. ; 
criteria for determining, 106 ff. ; as 
reality, 110; in relation to both idea 
and reality, 380 ff. ; and theory, conflict 
between, 150, 151 : mutual dependence 
of, 168; Whewell's view of, 163; (see 
Datum, Idea, Reality, Truth). 

Factual judgment : inadequate to com- 
plete mediation of conduct, 230-34; 
controlled by ends, 269; incidental to 
judgments of valuation, 272, 295; types 
of, implied in acceptance of an end, 
275, 276; presents warrant for accep- 
tance of ends, 277. 

Fite, W., 331 note. 

Fragmentary, 72 ; as quality of internal 
meaning, 360, 361; as an attribute of 
finite experience, 364,376; (see Stimu- 
lus, Tension). 

Functions: of experience, 16; logic of, 
18, 23; distinguished from status, 16; 
of thought, 23, 24, 78, 85; total, as 
stimulus to thought, 36-8, 80 ; different, 
and logical distinctions, 42; different, 
confused byLotze,56; sensations as, 58. 

Genetic : method, significance of, 14, 15, 
187 ; distinctions, importance of, 24, 53, 
62, 71,85; effect of ignoring, 53, 62, 71; 
(see Psychology). 

"Good": practical significance of, as 
moral predicate, 259; relation to 
"right," 335. 

Gore, W. C, 377 note. 

Gorgias, 225. 

Greek view of thought and reality, 
342 ff. 

Green, T. H., 274 note, 288 note 3, 315 
note, 316 note, 330, 331. 

Habit: relation of judgment to, inter- 
ruption and resumption of, 154; and 
hypothesis, 170 ; and analogy, 176 ; and 
simple enumeration, 176; and conver- 
sion, 176; and logical meaning, 198; 
logical function of, 375, 376. 

Heraclitus : his position, 215 ff. 

Hippo, 209. 



Index 



385 



Hobbes, Thomas, 301. 

Homogeneity : of the world-ground, 207 ; 
of the world, 209, 210. 

Hutcheson, F., 301. 

Hypothesis, nature of, VII, 143-83; un- 
equal stress commonly laid on its 
origin, structure, and function, 143-5; 
relation of data and hypothesis strictly 
correlative, 145, 152, 168; as predicate, 
146, 183 ; negative and positive sides of, 
146, 155 ; came to be recognized with 
rise of experimentalism, 159; and test, 
174, 175, 177 ff. ; origin of, 170, 171 if. ; 
supposition and, 178; interdependence 
of formation and test of, 182. 

Idea : continuous with fact, 9, 10, 12 ; 
distinction from fact, 13, 110; Lotze's 
confusion regarding, 31, 32, 41. 65; 
association of, 33 ; contrast with datum, 
52-4 ; functional conception of, 70, 112 
ff . ; objective validity of, 72-5 ; as entire 
content of judgment, 119; existential 
aspect of, 97, 99 if., 113; in relation to 
reference, 97 ff., 103, 129; representa- 
tional theory of, 100-ff., 113 ff., 141,347 
ff., 372 ff. ; universality of, 97 ff., 113 ff. ; 
as not referred to reality 2 97 ff. ; as 
forms of control, 129; function in judg- 
ment, 153, 154; distinguished from 
image, 183-93; distinction criticised, 
199-202; problems accompanying dis- 
covery of, 341 ; in Greek thought, 342 ; 
instrumental and representative func- 
tions of, 346 if., 372 ff. ; purposive char- 
acter of, 347 ff . ; external and internal 
meaning of, 347 ff . ; Royce's absolute 
system of, 348; triple relation to 
purpose in Royce's account, 349 ff . ; 
logical versus memorial, 351 ; in rela- 
tion to fact and reality, 379 ff. ; (see 
Hypothesis, Image, Predicate). 

Ideas : Platonic, 247. 

Image: as merely fanciful, 53; in rela- 
tion to meaning, 54; place of, in judg- 
ment, 154; distinction from idea, 189- 
93; distinction criticised, 199-202; as 
direct and indirect stimulus, 195-7. 

Imagery: empirical criteria of, 186; 
function of, 187; as representative, 
186-8, 194; psychological function of, 
193-7 ; logical function of, 198, 199. 

Immediate: as related to mediation, 
342, 350 ff . 

Impression : Lotze's definition of , 27,28, 
29, 32; objective determination of, 30, 
31; objective quality of, 31, 68; as 
psychic, 53 ; as transformed by thought 
into meanings or ideas, 67 ff. ; (see 
Idea, Meaning, Sensation). 

Indeterminate: as quality of finite 
experience, 364. 

Induction: Bacon's view of, 157; by 
enumeration and allied processes, 171 ; 
and habit, 176; versus deduction, 211, 
212. 

Inference: Lotze's view of, 60; in rela- 
tion to judgment, 117. 

Instrumental : as character of thought, 
78-82, 128, 140, 346 if., 372 ff.; (see Pur- 
pose). 



Interaction : physical, 218 ff . 

Interest : direction of, 205. 

Invention : form of deduction, 212. 

James, William, 81 note, 352 note, 375. 

Jevons, W. Stanley, 169, 173. 

Jones, Henry, 43 note, 59 note, 66. 

Judgment : Lotze's definition of, 59 and 
note; relation of, to ideas, 80; struc- 
ture of, 75 note ; Bosanquet's theory of, 
86 ff.; as a function, 107 ff. ; dead and 
live, 108; definition of , 86, 111; relation 
to inference, 116 if. ; limits of single, 
123 ff. ; negative, 114 ff . ; of perception, 
88 ff., 96; parts of, 118 ff., 207, 208; time 
relations of, 120 ff. ; as individual, 136; 
as instrumental, 128, 140; as categori- 
cal and hypothetical, 136; as imper- 
sonal, 131; as intuitive, 139; various 
definitions of, 147 ff. ; analysis of, 149 
ff . ; disjunctive, 155 ; psychology of, 
153; purpose of, 154; and interrupted 
activity, 154; unique system of, 224- 
30; general analysis of, 230-32; pur- 
posive character of, 353 ff . ; universal, 
354; particular, 358; individual, 359, 
360; mathematical, 354 if., 370; (see 
Economic, Ethical, Factual judgments, 
Copula, Predicate, Reflection, Subject). 

Kant, I., 43, 46, 60 note, 163, 263, 301. 

Kepler, 146, 181. 

Knowledge: in relation to reality, 102 
ff. ; meaning and, 128, "copy" and 
"instrumental" theories of, 129, 140, 
141; (see Judgment, Truth). 

Kulpe, O., 250 note. 

Logic: origin of, 4; types of, 5-22; as 
generic and specific, 18, 23 ; relations to 
psychology, 14, 15, 63, 64, 184, 185, 192 ff. 
effect of modern psychology upon, 345 
relation to genetic method, 15-18. 
problems illustrated, 19, 20; social 
significance of, 20; eristic the source 
of formal, 203; pre-Socratic, 203; and 
epistemology, 341, 342; (see Episte- 
mology, Psychology). 

Lotze: criticised, Studies II, III, IV; 
applied logic, 6 ; thought as accessory, 
56; view of judgment, 147; similarity 
between him and Whewell, 165 note; 
quoted, 6, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 42, 56 note, 
62, 63, 64, 66, 66, 67, 68, 69, 73, 77, 83, 84. 

Many: the, and the One, 210 ff., 218 ff. 

Marginal utility: principle of, 307, 
337 note. 

Martineau, J., 262. 

Mathematics: certain forms of proof 
in, 172 if. ; judgments of, 354 ff., 370. 

McGilvary, E. B., 257 note. 

Mead, G. H., 38 note, 337 note. 

Meaning: and logical idea, 30, 31, 32, 33, 
41, 97; as content of thought, 66 if.; 
three types of, 68; as property of inde- 
pendent idea, 73-5 ; and association of 
ideas, 33, 80; and reference, 97; world 
of, 98, 103, 112; and knowledge, 89, 128, 
190; equivalent to response, 198; versus 
existence, 216-18; inner and outer, 
347 if. ; (see Content, Idea, Reference). 



386 



Studies in Logical Theoky 



X. Means : as external and constitutive, 
78; reapplication of, the problem of 
economic valuation, 242, 243, 246, 259, 
260, 303, 304 ; objective in so far as not 
known adequately for one's purpose, 
256; definition of, incidental to all 
judgment, 272; factual determination 
of, sometimes determinative of ends 
also, 270. 

Mediation : in relation to the immedi- 
ate, 350 ff. 

Melissus : his dialectic, 214. 

Metaphysics, 8, 9, 13, 18, 85 ; and logic 
of experience, 13; as natural history, 
13-18; worth, 19-22; logical and, 72, 74; 
(see Epistemology, Logic). 

Mill, J. Stuart, 147, 160 ff., 162, 166. 

Mixture: logical meaning of idea of, 

219, 220, 222. 
Monism, 224. 

Moore, A. W., 76 note, 346 note. 
Motion : conservation of, 206, 
Negation, 97, 114 ff. 
Neo-Hegelian, 43, 316. 
Newton, L, 146, 159, 179; his notes for 

philosophizing, 159 note. 
No/aw versus e^vo-ei, 226. 

Normative and genetic, 16; (see End, 
Purpose, Validity, Value) . 

Obedience : a factor in genesis of moral- 
ity, 257 (see also Authority and Cus- 
tom). 

Object : how denned, 38, 39, 74, 76 ; soci- 
ally current, 230; real, individual 
in significance, 230; nature of the ethi- 
cal, 240, 328; of the economic, 259,260, 
328; (see Substance). 

Objectivity: Lotze's view of, 68 (see 
Study IV) ; types of, 68 ; Lotze's distinc- 
tion of logical and ontological, 72, 73; 
distinction denied, 341, 342; scope or 
conception of, 235; commonly denied 
to other than factual judgments, 247, 
248; not a property of sense-elements 
as such, 248, 249 ; a category of " apper- 
ception," 250; a mark of the proble- 
matic as such, 250, 251, 255; not ascer- 
tainable by any specific method, 252; 
"obtrusiveness" as evidence of, 253; 
"reliability" as evidence of, 263; con- 
ditions of experience of, 253-6; condi- 
tions of, present in the ethical and 
economic situations, 257-60; a real 
characteristic of ethical and economic 
judgment, 261-3; not dependent on 
social currency, 318-20; nor on possi- 
bility of social currency, 320-24; nor 
on permanence, 324-9; (see Reality, 
Validity). 

One: the, and the Many, 210 ff., 218 ff. 

Parmenides: his logical position, 216 
ff . ; influence on Platonic-Aristotelian 
logic, 217. 

Participation : significance of, in Plato, 
342 ff. 

Particularity : of an idea, 99, 113 ; of a 
judgment, 358. 



Perception: judgments of, 88 ff., 96. 

Perfect, the, 126. 

Physical judgment (see Factual judg- 
ment) . 

$v<ret versus fo/Aw, 226. 

*v'<ns, 207, 224. 

Plato, 53 note; on ideas and reality, 
342 ff., 378, 379. 

Pluralism, 81 note. 

Positing : thought as, 68. 

Predicate : how constituted, 75 note ; in 
relation to reality, 101, 103 ; as hypothe- 
sis, 147, 153, 155,156, 183, 186; develops 
out of imaged end, 232; interaction 
with subject, 232; in ethical judgment, 
258, 291-6; in economic, 259, 260, 309-11 ; 
(see Copula, Judgment, Hypothesis, 
Idea, Image). 

Predication, 118 ff. 

Pre-established harmony : in Eoyce's 
philosophy, 368. 

Presuppositions, 204, 206. 

Problematic (see Tension). 

Proof: inductive, 172, 173; of hypothe- 
sis, 174, 175; relation of, to origin of 
hypothesis, 179-82; Wundt's view of, 
177, 178. 

Proposition : and judgment, 118. 

Protagoras, 226. 

Prudence : ethical status of, as a virtue, 
246. 

Pythagoreans, the : their logical posi- 
tion, 216 ; use of experiment, 216. 

Psychical : distinguished from physical, 
25; Lotze's view of impression as bare- 
ly, 27, 28, 30; view criticised, 31-4, 41, 42: 
two meanings of, 38 note; psychical 
mechanism, 31; idea as, 53; problem of 
logical and, 54 and note, 64; activity of 
thought also made, by Lotze, 77 and 
note; subjective result, 84; (see Im- 
pression). 

Psychology : and logic, 14-16, 26, 63, 64, 
153,154,184, 185, 192 ff., 345, 348; prin- 
ciple of, functional, 229, 230; genesis of, 
280, 281 ; logical value of functional, 293. 

Psychologists' fallacy, 37. 

Purpose : logical importance of, 4, 9, 10, 
13, 15, 20, 35, 58, 76, 80, 154; logical aspects 
of, Study XI; in an idea, 347 ff. ; in 
judgment, 353 ff . ; in criterion of truth 
and error, 361 ff . ; origin of, as idea, 373 
ff. ; as method, 377; (see End, Recon- 
struction). 

Quales : of sensation, 55, 56, 60 note. 

Qualities : primary and secondary, 221. 

Question : and judgment, 97, 114 ff . 

Rationalism: criticised, 156 ff., 188 ff., 
298 ff. 

Rationality : of world, 206. 

Reality : as constructed by thought, 94 
ff.,104; as developing, 126 ; as including 
fact and idea, 108, 110, 125, 382; as inde- 
pendent of thought, 85, 87 ff., 104; as 



Index 



387 



subject of subject, 88 ff . ; popular cri- 
terion of, 105 ff . ; possibility of knowl- 
edge of. 91 ff., 102 ff., 125 ; for the individ- 
ual, 94 ff., 103, 112, 224 ff. ; as relative to 
judging, 149; as given in sensation, 160; 
"perception" and "recognition" co- 
efficients of, 263-7, 277; these present in 
ethical and economical experience, 
267-9; apprehension of , emotional, 263; 
scope of complete conception of, 235, 
340; degrees of, 340; Platonic concep- 
tion of, 343 ff. ; Royce's conception of, 
348 ; as related to fact and idea, 379 ff. ; 
(see Fact, Truth, Validity). 
Reason, sufficient : principle of, 206. 

Reconstruction : the function of think- 
ing, 38, 40, 46, 75, 76, 85; effect of deny- 
ing this, 47, 71, 72; data and, 49 ff.; in 
judgment, 154; 291, 295, 299, 311, 312, 346, 
347; (see Habit, Stimulus, Tension). 

Reference: as social, 74; problem of 
reference of ideas, 82 ff . ; as meaning, 
97 ff. ; functional conception of, 113; 
paradox of, 99; idea as, 129. 

Reflection: as derived, 1-12; naive, 3, 
9; subject-matter of, 7, 8; logic and, 
3, 18, 23; versus constitutive thought, 
43-8 ; distinguished, 255 ; general nature 
of, 269; end not always explicit in, 270; 
outcome of, statable in terms of end or 
means, 272 ; (see Judgment, Thought) . 

Reflective judgment, 134. 

Representation : as one of the two func- 
tions of an idea, 345, 347 ff., 372; signifi- 
cance of, in ideal reconstruction, 376. 

Response : failure of, and origin of judg- 
ment, 154. 

Restlessness: as source of reflection 
and purpose, 374 ff. ; (see Tension). 

Rhetoric : origin of, 203, 204. 

"Right" (see "Good"). 

Royce, Josiah : referred to, 76 note, 147 ; 

theory of ideas discussed, 346-82; 

quoted, 347, 348, 349, 350, 352, 353, 354, 355, 

356, 357, 358, 359, 362, 364, 366 note, 368. 

370,371,374,379,380,381. 

Satisfaction : pause of, as marking at- 
tainment of truth, 362 ff. 

Schiller, F. C. S., 327 note, 345 note. 

Science: relation to naive experience, 
10, 11; its historic stages, 11, 12; dis- 
tinction of logical procedure from 
epistemology, 13 ; same history as phi- 
losophy, 21, 22. 

Self, empirical : genesis and content 
of concept of, 290, 292, 331, 332 note 1. 

Self, "energetic": implied in experi- 
ence of "warrant," 277, 278; stimulus 
to development of concept of empirical 
self, 279-81 ; essential principle in all 
valuation, 281-5; evolution of moral 
attitude of reference to, 285-9 ; logical 
function ofj in valuation, 296; impor- 
tant place in economic valuation, 308, 
309 ; not capable of being described in 
terms of purpose or ideal, 313-16 ; Brad- 
ley's misinterpretation of, 332 note. 



Self-realization (see also Green, T. 
H.): theory of, as moral ideal futile, 
298; logically congruous with determin- 
ism and hedonism, 330, 331. 

Sensations: logical import of, 57; as 
functions of experience, 58 ; as point of 
contact with reality, 90; place in judg- 
ment, 154; and ideas, 164 ff. ; (see Im- 
pressions, Psychical). 

Sensori-motor activity, 193, 200. 
Shaftesbury, 301. 

Sigwart, C. : view of judgment, 147. 
Skepticism, 50 note, 85. 

"Social currency": implies an iden- 
tity of aspect of an object to different 
persons, 229 ; object having, an abstrac- 
tion like social individual, 229; not a 
test of objectivity, 318-29. 

Socrates : function of concept, 342. 

Sophists, the, 225. 

Spencer, H., 248, 250 note 1, 315 note. 

Standard (see also Predicate): identi- 
fied with predicate in ethical judgment, 
238-40 ; function of, in ethical judgment, 
274,299,300; morphology and mode of 
reconstruction of, 296, 297 ; an ultimate 
ethical, impossible, 299 ; objectivity of, 
300, 301. 

Stimulus : of thought, 7, 8, 17, 24, 37-40, 
47, 81; Lotze's view of, 27, 29, 30; view 
criticised, 30-36; confusion of datum 
with, 61; defined, 75; and judgment, 
153-4; as condition of thinking, 193 ff. ; 
as direct and indirect, 195-7 ; of ethical 
judgment, 238-41, 291; of economic, 
judgment, 241-6, 302; (see Content, 
Datum). 

Stout, G. F. : referred to, 349. 

Stratton, G. M., 318 note. 

Structure, 15, 16, 17, 18, 24, 75; (see 
Function). 

Subject: of judgment, how constituted, 
75 note ; as constructed by thought, 94 
ff., 103; as a part of judgment, 118 ff.; 
as reality, 88 ff. ; as inside and outside 
of judgment, 93, 96 ; functional theory 
of, 111, 125; as that requiring explana- 
tion, 208, 211 ff . ; as modified by deduc- 
tion, 212 ; given by analysis of situation, 
232; interacts with predicate in judg- 
ment, 232; of ethical judgment, 258, 
296-8; of economic judgment, 259, 260, 
304, 309-11 ; (see Copula, Datum, Judg- 
ment, Predicate). 

Subjective: distinguished from objec- 
tive, 25; Lotze's view of impressions 
as purely, 27, 28; view criticised. 31; 
definition of, 39 ; developed only within 
reflection, 52, 53; (see Psychical). 

Subjectivism : in Lotze, 83, 84; in Royce, 
360. 

Subject-matter of thought : distin- 
guished as stimulus, datum, and 
content, 7, 8, 24; confusion of these 
(genetic) distinctions, 17, 18; as ante- 
cedent, Study II ; as datum, Study III ; 
as content, Study IV. 



388 



Studies in Logical Theory 



Substance: ethical theories based on 
logic involved in rationalistic concep- 
tion of, 298, 299; meaning of concept 
of, 326, 327; type-form of conduct 
analogous to concept of a particular 
kind of, 327, 328. 

Substantiation: significance of 

Plato's, of ideas, 342 ft'. 
Supposition and hypothesis, 178-81. 
Sweet, Henry : quoted, 153 note. 
Synthetic (see Reconstruction). 

Taylor, A. E., 299 note 2, 315 note, 316, 

324. 
Teleology (see End, Purpose). 

Temptation : ethical, 238, 301; economic, 
305. 

Tension : as stimulus to thought, 37, 38, 
49, 50, 53, 70, 85 ; in relation to constitu- 
tion of sensory datum, 53, 58, 59, 70; 
constitution of meaning as distinct 
from fact, 75, 85, 154, 237-46, 250, 251, 255, 
291-5, 374 ft. ; (see Purpose, Recon- 
struction) . 

Thales: his apxv, water, 209; in relation 
to deduction, 212, 214. 

Thought : forms of, 58 ff . ; as modes of 
organizing data, 63; three kinds ac- 
cording to Lotze, 68, 69; as positing 
and distinguishing, 69; validity of its 
function, 76-82; of its products, 82-5; 
instrumental character, 78-82; as dis- 
criminating sensory qualities, 200-202 ; 
(see Judgment, Reflection). 

Time : as involved in judgment, 120 ff. 

Transcendentalism, 29, 43-8. 

Trendelenburg, A. : view of judgment, 
147. 

Truth : criterion of, 84 ; Bosanquet's con- 
ception of, 105; popular criterion of, 
105 ff . ; and purpose, Study XI ; repre- 
sentational versus teleological view of, 
341 ff. ; criterion of, 361 ff. ; (see Objec- 
tivity, Validity). 

Ueberweg : view of judgment, 147. 

Uniformity : of nature, 206. 

Unity : of the world, 207. 



Universal : first and second according 
to Lotze, 56, 59, 69; ideas as, 97 ff., 113; 
judgment as, 136; Mr. Royce's treat- 
ment of, 354 ft. ; necessity and, 357. 

Validity: of thought, 7, 8; relation to 
genesis, 14, 15 ; test, 17, 18 ; defines con- 
tent of thought, 24 ; problem of, Study 
IV ; Lotze's dilemma regarding, 71-8r ; 
of bare object of thought, 72-6; of 
activity of thought, 76-82; of product 
of thought, 82-5; (see Objectivity, 
Reality, Truth). 

Value: Lotze's distinction of, from 
existence. 28, 29; view criticised, 31, 41, 
45; organized, of experience, 42-8; de- 
termined in and by a logical process, 
233; nature of consciousness of, 273, 
333-5; function of consciousness of, 
335-7 ; properly mediate and functional 
in character, 338-40. 

Valuation (see also Ethical judgment, 
Economic judgment) : includes only 
ethical and economic types of judg- 
ment, 227, 236, 338-40; general account 
of process of, 272, 295; reconstructive 
of self as well as of reality, 312. 

Venn, John : origin of hypothesis, 169. 

"Warrant": consciousness of, accom- 
panies purely factual as well as valua- 
tional judgment processes, 276, 277 ; the 
constitutive feature of survey of fac- 
tual conditions, 278, 279. 

Welton, J. : origin of hypothesis, 171. 

Whewell, William, 163; view of sensa- 
tions and ideas, 164, 165; of induction, 
165 ; a certain agreement between him 
and Mill, 166. 

Wieser, F. von, 335 note 2. 

Will : as related to thought, 366 note ; 
(see Activity, End, Purpose). 

Wundt, W. : view of judgment, 147 ; view 
of mathematical induction, 173; for- 
mation and proof of hypothesis, 177 ff. ; 
distinction between supposition and 
hypothesis, 178 ff. 

"Wrong" (see "Bad"). 

Xenophanes : his logical position, 216. 

Zeno : his dialectic, 214. 



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